xm
asm
i
Em
SBu
1CKS COLLEGE L*C,,| .... .,,■ |i
JfllRH TOO 059 383 7
DATE DUE
JIIN 1
8 1986
F£& a 6
".- v *-i
!
J ' ' -
C
2
i
id
CAYLORD
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2012 with funding from
Brigham Young University-Idaho
http://www.archive.org/details/wellbelovedsketc00hard1
Stye IWt-Stflnnrt
A SKETCH OF
A TEMPERAMENT
BY
QUjnmaa faring
• One shape of many names."—?. B. Shelley
^
NEW YORK AND LONDON
HARPER 6- BROTHERS
PUBLISHERS :: MCMV
Copyright, 1892, 1897, by Harper & Brothers.
All flights reserved.
PREFACE
The peninsula carved by time out of a single
stone, whereon most of the following scenes are
laid, has been for centuries immemorial the home
of a curious and almost distinctive people, cherish-
ing strange beliefs and singular customs, now for
the most part obsolescent. Fancies, like certain
soft - wooded plants which cannot bear the silent
inland frosts, but thrive by the sea in the roughest
of weather, seem to grow up naturally here, in par-
ticular among those natives who have no active
concern in the labors of the "isle." Hence it is a
spot apt to generate a type of personage like the
character imperfectly sketched in these pages — a
native of natives — whom some may choose to call
a fantast (if they honor him with their considera-
tion so far), but whom others may see only as one
that gave objective continuity and a name to a
delicate dream which in a vaguer form is more or
less common to all men, and is by no means new
to Platonic philosophers.
iii
PREFACE
To those who know the rocky coigne of England
here depicted — overlooking the great Channel
highway with all its suggestiveness, and standing
out so far into mid - sea that touches of the Gulf
Stream soften the air till February — it is matter of
surprise that the place has not been more frequent-
ly chosen as the retreat of artists and poets in
search of inspiration, for at least a month or two in
the year — the tempestuous rather than the fine sea-
sons by preference. To be sure, one nook therein is
the retreat, at their country's expense, of other gen-
iuses from a distance ; but their presence is hardly
discoverable. Yet perhaps it is as well that the
artistic visitors do not come, or no more would be
heard of little freehold houses being bought and
sold there for a couple of hundred pounds — built
of solid stone, and dating from the sixteenth centu-
ry and earlier, with mullions, copings, and corbels
complete. These transactions, by-the-way, are car-
ried out and covenanted, or were till lately, in the
parish church, in the face of the congregation, such
being the ancient custom of the " isle."
The present is the first publication of this tale
in an independent form ; and a few chapters have
been rewritten since it was issued in the periodical
press in 1892.
T. H.
January \ 1897.
iv
CONTENTS
PART FIRST
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
PAGE
I. A Supposititious Presentment of Her . . 3
II. The Incarnation is Assumed to be True . 11
III. The Appointment 22
IV. A Lonely Pedestrian 26
V. A Charge „ 33
VI. On the Brink 44
VII. Her Earlier Incarnations 51
VIII. "Too Like the Lightning" 62
IX. Familiar Phenomena in the Distance . . 74
PART SECOND
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
I. The Old Phantom Becomes Distinct . . 83
II. She Draws Close and Satisfies .... 99
III. She Becomes an Inaccessible Ghost . . . 109
IV. She Threatens to Resume Corporeal Sub-
stance 122
v
CONTENTS
PAGE
V. The Resumption Takes Place 130
VI. The Past Shines in the Present. . . . 136
VII. The New Becomes Established .... 148
VIII. His Own Soul Confronts Him 159
IX. Juxtapositions 167
X. She Fails to Vanish Still 180
XI. The Image Persists 190
XII. A Grille Descends Between 199
XIII. She is Enshrouded from Sight .... 214
PART THIRD
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
I. She Returns for the New Season .
II. Misgivings on the Re-embodiment .
III. The Renewed Image Burns Itself In
IV. A Dash for the Last Incarnation .
V. On the Verge of Possession . . .
VI. The Well-Beloved is — Where? . .
VII. An Old Tabernacle in a New Aspect
VIII. "Alas for this Gray Shadow, Once a
Man!"
223
239
250
262
277
292
311
321
PART FIRST
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
" Now, if Time knows
That Her, whose radiant brows
Weave them a garland of my vows ;
Her that dares be
What these lines wish to see :
I seek ho further, it is She,"
-i-R. Crashaw,
9
THE WELL-BELOVED
i
A SUPPOSITITIOUS PRESENTMENT OF HER
A PERSON who differed from the local way-
farers was climbing the steep road which leads
through the sea-skirted townlet definable as
the Street of Wells and forms a pass into
that Gibraltar of Wessex, the singular penin-
sula once an island, and still called such, that
stretches out like the head of a bird into the
English Channel. It is connected with the
mainland by a long thin neck of pebbles " cast
up by rages of the se,' and unparalleled in its
kind in Europe.
The pedestrian was what he looked like — a
young man from London and the cities of the
Continent. Nobody could see at present that
his urbanism sat upon him only as a garment.
He was just recollecting with something of
3
THE WELL-BELOVED
self-reproach that a whole three years and
eight months had flown since he paid his
last visit to his father at this lonely rock of
his birthplace, the intervening time having
been spent amid many contrasting societies,
peoples, manners, and scenes.
What had seemed usual in the isle when he
lived there always looked quaint and odd after
his later impressions. More than ever the
spot seemed what it was said once to have
been, the ancient Vindilia Island, and the
Home of the Slingers. The towering rock,
the houses above houses, one man's doorstep
rising behind his neighbor's chimney, the
gardens hung up by one edge to the sky, the
vegetables growing on apparently almost ver-
tical planes, the unity of the whole island as
a solid and single block of limestone four
miles long, were no longer familar and com-
monplace ideas. All now stood dazzlingly
unique and white against the tinted sea, and
the sun flashed on infinitely stratified walls
of oolite,
"The melancholy ruins
Of cancelled cycles," . . .
with a distinctiveness that call the eyes to it
as strongly as any spectacle he had beheld afar.
4
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
After a laborious clamber he reached the
top, and walked along the plateau towards
the eastern village. The time being about
two o'clock, in the middle of the summer
season, the road was glaring and dusty, and
drawing near to his father's house he sat down
in the sun.
He stretched out his hand upon the rock
beside him. It felt warm. That was the
island's personal temperature when in its
afternoon sleep, as now. He listened, and
heard sounds : whir-whir, saw-saw-saw. Those
were the island's snores — the noises of the
quarrymen and stone-sawyers.
Opposite to the spot on which he sat was a
roomy cottage or homestead. Like the island
it was all of stone, not only in walls but in
window-frames, roof, chimneys, fence, stile,
pigsty and stable, almost door.
He remembered who had used to live there
— and probably lived there now — the Caro fam-
ily; the " roan-mare" Caros, as they were called
to distinguish them from other branches of the
same pedigree, there being but half a dozen
Christian names and surnames in the whole
island. He crossed the road and looked in at
the open doorway. Yes, there they were still.
5
THE WELL-BELOVED
Mrs. Caro, who had seen him from the
window, met him in the entry, and an old-
fashioned greeting took place between them.
A moment after a door leading from the back
rooms was thrown open, and a young girl
about seventeen or eighteen came bounding
in.
" Why, 'tis dear Joce !" she burst out joy-
fully. And running up to the young man,
she kissed him.
The demonstration was sweet enough from
the owner of such an affectionate pair of
bright hazel eyes and brown tresses of hair.
But it was so sudden, so unexpected by a
man fresh from towns, that he winced for a
moment quite involuntarily ; and there was
some constraint in the manner in which he re-
turned her kiss, and said, " My pretty little
Avice, how do you do after so long?"
For a few seconds her impulsive innocence
hardly noticed his start of surprise ; but Mrs.
Caro, the girl's mother, had observed it in-
stantly. With a pained flush she turned to
her daughter.
" Avice — my dear Avice ! Why — what are
you doing ? Don't you know that you've
grown up to be a woman since Jocelyn — Mr.
a
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
Pierston — was last down here? Of course
you mustn't do now as you used to do three
or four years ago !"
The awkwardness which had arisen was
hardly removed by Pierston's assurance that
he quite expected her to keep up the practice
of her childhood, followed by several minutes
of conversation on general subjects. He was
vexed from his soul that his unaware move-
ment should so have betrayed him. At his
leaving he repeated that if Avice regarded him
otherwise than as she used to do he would
never forgive her; but though they parted
good friends, her regret at the incident was
visible in her face. Jocelyn passed out into
the road and onward to his father's house hard
by. The mother and daughter were left alone.
" I was quite amazed at 'ee, my child !" ex-
claimed the elder. " A young man from Lon-
don and foreign cities, used now to the strictest
company manners, and ladies who almost think
it vulgar to smile broad ! How could ye do it,
Avice ?"
" I — I didn't think about how I was altered !"
said the conscience-stricken girl. " I used to
kiss him, and he used to kiss me before he
went away."
B
THE WELL-BELOVED
" But that was years ago, my dear !"
" Oh yes, and for the moment I forgot ! He
seemed just the same to me as he used to be."
" Well, it can't be helped now. You must be
careful in the future. He's got lots of young
women, I'll warrant, and has few thoughts left
for you. He's what they call a sculptor, and
he means to be a great genius in that line some
day, they do say."
" Well, I've done it, and it can't be mended !"
moaned the girl.
Meanwhile Jocelyn Pierston, the sculptor of
budding fame, had gone onward to the house
of his father, an inartistic man of trade and
commerce merely, from whom, nevertheless,
Jocelyn accepted a yearly allowance pending
the famous days to come. But the elder, hav-
ing received no warning of his son's intended
visit, was not at home to receive him. Jocelyn
looked round the familiar premises, glanced
across the Common at the great yards, within
which eternal saws were going to and fro upon
eternal blocks of stone — the very same saws
and the very same blocks that he had seen there
when last in the island, so it seemed to him —
and then passed through the dwelling into the
back garden.
8
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
Like all the gardens in the isle it was sur-
rounded by a wall of dry-jointed spawls, and
at its farther extremity it ran out into a corner,
which adjoined the garden of the Caros. He
had no sooner reached this spot than he be-
came aware of a murmuring and sobbing on
the other side of the wall. The voice he recog-
nized in a moment as Avice's, and she seemed
to be confiding her trouble to some young
friend of her own sex.
" Oh, what shall I do I what shall I do !" she
was saying bitterly. " So bold as it was — so
shameless! How could I think of such a
thing ! He will never forgive me — never,
never like me again ! He'll think me a for-
ward hussy, and yet — and yet I quite forgot
how much I had grown. But that he'll never
believe !" The accents were those of one who
had for the first time become conscious of her
womanhood, as an unwonted possession which
shamed and frightened her.
:< Did he seem angry at it ?" inquired the
friend.
" Oh no — not angry! Worse. Cold and
haughty. Oh, he's such a fashionable person
now — not at all an island man. But there's
no use in talking of it. I wish I was dead !"
r>
THE WELL-BELOVED
Pierston retreated as quickly as he could.
He grieved at the incident which had brought
such pain to this innocent soul ; and yet it was
beginning to be a source of vague pleasure to
him. He returned to the house, and when his
father had come back and welcomed him, and
they had shared a meal together, Jocelyn again
went out, full of an earnest desire to soothe
his young neighbor's sorrow in a way she little
expected ; though, to tell the truth, his affec-
tion for her was rather that of a friend than of
a lover, and he felt by no means sure that the
migratory, elusive idealization he called his
love, who, ever since his boyhood, had flitted
from human shell to human shell an indefinite
number of times, was going to take up her
abode in the body of Avice Caro.
II
THE INCARNATION IS ASSUMED TO BE TRUE
It was difficult to meet her again, even
though on this lump of rock the difficulty-
lay as a rule rather in avoidance than in meet-
ing. But Avice had been transformed into a
very different kind of young woman by the
self-consciousness engendered of her impul-
sive greeting, and, notwithstanding their near
neighborhood, he could not encounter her, try
as he would. No sooner did he appear an inch
beyond his father's door than she was to earth
like a fox ; she bolted up-stairs to her room.
Anxious to soothe her after his unintentional
slight, he could not stand these evasions long.
The manners of the isle were primitive and
straightforward, even among the well-to-do ;
and noting her disappearance one day, he fol-
lowed her into the house and onward to the
foot of the stairs.
" Avice!" he called.
ii
THE WELL-BELOVED
"Yes, Mr. Pierston."
" Why do you run up-stairs like that ?"
"Oh — only because I wanted to come up
for something."
" Well, if you've got it, can't you come down
again ?"
" No, I can't very well."
" Come, dear Avice. That's what you are,
you know."
There was no response.
" Well, if you won't, you won't !" he con-
tinued. " I don't want to bother you." And
Pierston went away.
He was stopping to look at the old-fashioned
flowers under the garden walls when he heard
a voice behind him.
"Mr. Pierston — I wasn't angry with you.
When you were gone I thought — you might
mistake me, and I felt I could do no less than
come and assure you of my friendship still."
Turning, he saw the blushing Avice immedi-
ately behind him.
" You are a good, dear girl !" said he, and,
seizing her hand, set upon her cheek the kind
of kiss that should have been the response to
hers on the day of his coming.
" Darling Avice, forgive me for the slight
12
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
that day! Say you do. Come, now! And
then I'll say to you what I have never said to
any other woman, living or dead : ' Will you
have me as your husband?' "
" Ah ! — mother says I am only one of many !"
"You are not, dear. You knew me when I
was young, and others didn't."
Somehow or other her objections were got
over, and though she did not give an immedi-
ate assent, she agreed to meet him later in the
afternoon, when she walked with him to the
southern point of the island called the Beal, or,
by strangers, the Bill, pausing over the treacher-
ous cavern known as Cave Hole, into which
the sea roared and splashed now as it had done
when they visited it together as children. To
steady herself while looking in he offered her
his arm, and she took it — for the first time as
a woman, for the hundredth time as his com-
panion.
They rambled on to the light-house, where
they would have lingered longer if Avice had
not suddenly remembered an engagement to
recite poetry from a platform that very even-
ing at the Street of Wells, the village com-
manding the entrance to the island — the vil-
lage that has now advanced to be a town.
13
THE WELL-BELOVED
"Recite!" said he. " Who'd have thought
anybody or anything could recite down here,
except the reciter we hear away there — the
never speechless sea."
" Oh, but we are quite intellectual now ; in
the winter, particularly. But, Jocelyn — don't
come to the recitation, will you ? It would
spoil my performance if you were there, and I
want to be as good as the rest."
" I won't if you really wish me not to. But
I shall meet you at the door and bring you
home."
"Yes!" she said, looking up into his face.
Avice was perfectly happy now; she could
never have believed on that mortifying day of
his coming that she would be so happy with
him. When they reached the east side of the
isle they parted, that she might be soon enough
to take her place on the platform. Pierston
went home, and after dark, when it was about
the hour for accompanying her back, he went
along the middle road northward to the Street
of Wells.
He was full of misgiving. He had known
Avice Caro so well of old that his feeling for her
now was rather comradeship than love ; and
what he had said to her in a moment of im-
14
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
pulse that morning rather appalled him in its
consequences. Not that any of the more so-
phisticated and accomplished women who had
attracted him successively would be likely to
rise inconveniently between them. For he had
quite disabused his mind of the assumption
that the idol of his fancy was an integral part
of the personality in which it had sojourned
for a long or a short while.
To his Well -Beloved he had always been
faithful ; but she had had many embodiments.
Each individuality known as Lucy, Jane,
Flora, Evangeline, or what - not, had been
merely a transient condition of her. He did
not recognize this as an excuse or as a defence,
but as a fact simply. Essentially she was per-
haps of no tangible substance ; a spirit, a
dream, a frenzy, a conception, an aroma, an
epitomized sex, a light of the eye, a parting
of the lips. God only knew what she really
was ; Pierston did not. She was indescriba-
ble.
Never much considering that she was a sub-
jective phenomenon vivified by the weird in-
fluences of his descent and birthplace, the dis-
covery of her ghostliness, of her independence
i5
THE WELL-BELOVED
of physical laws and failings, had occasionally
given him a sense of fear. He never knew
where she next would be, whither she would
lead him, having herself instant access to all
ranks and classes, to every abode of men.
Sometimes at night he dreamed that she was
" the wile-weaving Daughter of high Zeus" in
person, bent on tormenting him for his sins
against her beauty in his art — the implacable
Aphrodite herself indeed. He knew that he
loved the masquerading creature wherever he
found her, whether with blue eyes, black eyes,
or brown ; whether presenting herself as tall,
fragile, or plump. She was never in two
places at once ; but hitherto she had never
been in one place long.
By making this clear to his mind some time
before to-day, he had escaped a good deal of
ugly self-reproach. It was simply that she
who always attracted him, and led him whither
she would as by a silken thread, had not re-
mained the occupant of the same fleshly taber-
nacle in her career so far. Whether she would
ultimately settle down to one he could not
say.
Had he felt that she was becoming manifest
in Avice, he would have tried to believe that
16
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
this was the terminal spot of her migrations,
and have been content to abide by his words.
But did he see the Well-Beloved in Avice at
all ? The question was somewhat disturbing.
He had reached the brow of the hill, and
descended towards the village, where in the
long, straight, Roman street he soon found the
lighted hall. The performance was not yet
over; and by going round to the side of the
building and standing on a mound he could
see the interior as far down as the platform
level. Avice's turn, or second turn, came on
almost immediately. Her pretty embarrass-
ment on facing the_ audience rather won him
away from his doubts. She was, in truth,
what is called a " nice " girl ; attractive, cer-
tainly, but above all things nice — one of the
class with whom the risks of matrimony ap-
proximate most nearly to zero. Her intelli-
gent eyes, her broad forehead, her thoughtful
carriage, insured one thing, that of all the
girls he had known he had never met one
with more charming and solid qualities than
Avice Caro's. This was not a mere conjecture
— he had known her long and thoroughly;
her every mood and temper.
A heavy wagon passing without drowned
h 17
THE WELL-BELOVED
her small, soft voice for him ; but the audience
were pleased, and she blushed at their ap-
plause. He now took his station at the door,
and when the people had done pouring out he
found her within awaiting him.
They climbed homeward slowly by the Old
Road, Pierston dragging himself up the steep
by the wayside hand-rail and pulling Avice
after him upon his arm. At the top they
turned and stood still. To the left of them
the sky was streaked like a fan with the light-
house rays, and under their front, at periods
of a quarter of a minute, there arose a deep,
hollow stroke like the single beat of a drum,
the intervals being filled with a long-drawn
rattling, as of bones between huge canine
jaws. It came from the vast concave of Dead-
man's Bay, rising and falling against the peb-
ble dike.
The evening and night winds here were, to
Pierston's mind, charged with a something
that did not burden them elsewhere. They
brought it up from that sinister bay to the
west, whose movement she and he were hear-
ing now. It was a presence — an imaginary
shape or essence from the human multitude
lying below: those who had gone down in
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
vessels of war, East- Indiamen, barges, brigs,
and ships of the Armada — select people, com-
mon, and debased, whose interests and hopes
had been as wide asunder as the poles, but
who had rolled each other to oneness on that
restless sea-bed. There could almost be felt
the brush of their huge composite ghost as it
ran a shapeless figure over the isle, shrieking
for some good god who would disunite it
again.
The twain wandered a long way that night
amid these influences — so far as to the old Hope
Church-yard, which lay in a ravine formed by
a landslip ages ago. The church had slipped
down with the rest of the cliff, and had long
been a ruin. It seemed to say that in this last
local stronghold of the pagan divinities, where
pagan customs lingered yet, Christianity had
established itself precariously at best. In that
solemn spot Pierston kissed her.
The kiss was by no means on Avice's initia-
tive this time. Her former demonstrativeness
seemed to have increased her present reserve.
That day was the beginning of a pleasant
month passed mainly in each other's society.
He found that she could not only recite poetry
19
THE WELL-BELOVED
at intellectual gatherings, but play the piano
fairly, and sing to her own accompaniment.
He observed that every aim of those wrho
had brought her up had been to get her away
mentally as far as possible from her natural
and individual life as an inhabitant of a pecul-
iar island ; to make her an exact copy of tens
of thousands of other people, in whose circum-
stances there was nothing special, distinctive,
or picturesque ; to teach her to forget all the
experiences of her ancestors ; to drown the
local ballads by songs purchased at the Bud-
mouth fashionable music-sellers', and the local
vocabulary by a governess-tongue of no coun-
try at all. She lived in a house that would
have been the fortune of an artist, and learned
to draw London suburban villas from printed
copies.
Avice had seen all this before he pointed it
out, but, with a girl's tractability, had acqui-
esced. By constitution she was local to the
bone, but she could not escape the tendency
of the age.
The time for Jocelyn's departure drew near,
and she looked forward to it sadly, but serenely,
their engagement being now a settled thing.
Pierston thought of the native custom on such
3Q
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
occasions, which had prevailed in his and her
family for centuries, both being of the old stock
of the isle. The influx of " kimberlins," or
" foreigners " (as strangers from the mainland
of Wessex were called), had led in a large
measure to its discontinuance ; but underneath
the veneer of Avice's education many an old-
fashioned idea lay slumbering, and he won-
dered if, in her natural melancholy at his leav-
ing, she regretted the changing manners which
made unpopular the formal ratification of a
betrothal, according to the precedent of their
sires and grandsires.
Ill
THE APPOINTMENT
" Well," said he, " here we are, arrived at
the fag-end of my holiday. What a pleasant
surprise my old home, which I have not
thought worth coming to see for three or four
years, had in store for me !"
" You must go to-morrow?" she asked, un-
easily.
"Yes."
Something seemed to overweigh them ; some-
thing more than the natural sadness of a part-
ing which was not to be long ; and he decided
that instead of leaving in the daytime as he
had intended, he would defer his departure till
night, and go by the mail-train from Budmouth.
This would give him time to look into his
father's quarries, and enable her, if she chose,
to walk with him along the beach as far as to
Henry the Eighth's Castle above the sands,
where they could linger and watch the moon
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
rise over the sea. She said she thought she
could come.
So after spending the next day with his
father in the quarries, Jocelyn prepared to
leave, and at the time appointed set out from
the stone house of his birth in this stone isle
to walk to Budmouth-Regis by the path along
the beach, Avice having some time earlier gone
down to see some friends in the Street of Wells,
which was half-way towards the spot of their
tryst. The descent soon brought him to the
pebble bank, and leaving behind him the last
houses of the isle, and the ruins of the village
destroyed by the November gale of 1824, he
struck out along the narrow thread of land.
When he had walked a hundred yards he
stopped, turned aside to the pebble ridge
which walled out the sea, and sat down to wait
for her.
Between him and the lights of the ships rid-
ing at anchor in the roadstead two men passed
slowly in the direction he intended to pursue.
One of them recognized Jocelyn, and bade
him good-night, adding, "Wish you joy, sir,
of your choice, and hope the wedden will be
soon !
u Thank you, Seaborn. Well — we shall see
C 23
THE WELL-BELOVED
what Christmas will do towards bringing it
about."
" My wife opened upon it this mornen :
1 Please God, I'll up and see that there wed-
den,' says she, ' knowing 'em both from their
crawling-days.' M
The men moved on, and when they were
out of Pierston's hearing the one who had
not spoken said to his friend, " Who was that
young kimberlin ? He don't seem one o' we."
" Oh, he is, though, every inch o' en. He's
Mr. Jocelyn Pierston, the stwone-merchant's
only son up at East Quarriers. He's to be
married to a stylish young body ; her mother,
a widow woman, carries on the same business
as well as she can ; but their trade is not a
twentieth part of Pierston's. He's worth thou-
sands and thousands, they say, though 'a do
live on in the same wold way up in the same
wold house. This son is doen great things in
London as 'a image-carver; and I can mind
when, as a boy, 'a first took to carving soldiers
out o' bits o' stwone from the soft-bed of his
father's quarries; and then 5a made a set o'
stwonen chess-men, and so 'a got on. He's
quite the gent in London, they tell me ; and
the wonder is that 'a cared to come back here
24
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
and pick up little Avice Caro — nice maid as
she is notwithstanding. . . . Hullo ! there's
to be a change in the weather soon."
Meanwhile the subject of their remarks
waited at the appointed place till seven o'clock,
the hour named between himself and his affi-
anced, had struck. Almost at the moment he
saw a figure coming forward from the last
lamp at the bottom of the hill. But the figure
speedily resolved itself into that of a boy, who,
advancing to Jocelyn, inquired if he were Mr.
Pierston, and handed him a note.
IV
A LONELY PEDESTRIAN
When the boy had gone Jocelyn retraced
his steps to the last lamp, and read, in Avice's
hand :
" My Dearest, — I shall be sorry if I grieve you at
all in what I am going to say about our arrangement
to meet to night in the Sandsfoot ruin. But I have
fancied that my seeing you a§ain and again lately is in-
clining your father to insist, and you as his heir to feel,
that we ought to carry out island custom in our court-
ing— your people being such old inhabitants in an
unbroken line. Truth to say, mother supposes that
your father, for natural reasons, may have hinted to
you that we ought. Now the thing is contrary to
my feelings; it is nearly left off, and I do not think it
good, even where there is property, as in your case,
to justify it, in a measure. I would rather trust in
Providence.
" On the whole, therefore, it is best that I should
not come — if only for appearances — and meet you at
a time and place suggesting the custom, to others
than ourselves, at least, if known.
26
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
"I am sure that this decision will not disturb you
much ; that you will understand my modern feelings,
and think no worse of me for them. And, dear, if it
were to be done, and we were unfortunate in it, we
might both have enough old family feeling to think,
like our forefathers, and possibly your father, that we
could not marry honorably ; and hence we might be
made unhappy.
11 However, you will come again shortly, will you
not, dear Jocelyn ? — and then the time will soon draw
on when no more good-byes will be required.
" Always and ever yours,
" Avice."
Jocelyn, having read the letter, was sur-
prised at the naivete it showed, and at Avice
and her mother's antiquated simplicity in sup-
posing that to be still a grave and operating
principle which was a bygone barbarism to
himself and other absentees from the island.
His father, as a money - maker, might have
practical wishes on the matter of descendants
which lent plausibility to the conjecture of
Avice and her mother ; but to Jocelyn he
had never expressed himself in favor of the
ancient ways, old-fashioned as he was.
Amused, therefore, at her regard of herself
as modern, Jocelyn was disappointed and a
little vexed that such an unforeseen reason
27
THE WELL-BELOVED
should have deprived him of her company.
How the old ideas survived under the new
education !
The reader is asked to remember that the
date, though recent in the history of the Isle
of Slingers, was more than forty years ago.
Finding that the evening seemed lowering,
yet indisposed to go back and hire a vehicle,
he went on quickly alone. In such an ex-
posed spot the night wind was gusty, and the
sea behind the pebble barrier kicked and
flounced in complex rhythms, which could
be translated equally well as shocks of battle
or shouts of thanksgiving.
Presently on the pale road before him he
discerned a figure, the figure of a woman.
He remembered that a woman passed him
while he was reading Avice's letter by the
last lamp, and now he was overtaking her.
He did hope for a moment that it might be
Avice, with a changed mind. But it was not
she, nor anybody like her. It was a taller,
squarer form than that of his betrothed, and
although the season was only autumn she was
wrapped in furs, or in thick and heavy cloth-
ing of some kind.
28
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
He soon advanced abreast of her, and could
get glimpses of her profile against the road-
stead lights. It was dignified, arresting — that
of a very Juno. Nothing more classical had
he ever seen. She walked at a swinging pace,
yet with such ease and power that there was
but little difference in their rate of speed for
several minutes ; and during this time he re-
garded and conjectured. However, he was
about to pass her by when she suddenly
turned and addressed him.
''Mr. Pierston, I think, of East Quarriers?"
He assented, and could just discern what a
handsome, commanding, imperious face it was
— quite of a piece with the proud tones of her
voice. She was a new type altogether in his
experience; and her accent was not so local as
Avice's.
" Can you tell me the time, please ?"
He looked at his watch by the aid of a light,
and in telling her that it was a quarter past
seven observed, by the momentary gleam of his
match, that her eyes looked a little red and
chafed, as if with weeping.
" Mr. Pierston, will you forgive what will ap-
pear very strange to you, I dare say ? That is,
may I ask you to lend me some money for a
29
THE WELL-BELOVED
day or two ? I have been so foolish as to leave
my purse on the dressing-table."
It did appear strange ; and yet there were
features in the young lady's personality which
assured him in a moment that she was not an
impostor. He yielded to her request, and put
his hand in his pocket. Here it remained for
a moment. How much did she mean by the
words "some money?" The Junonian quality
of her form and manner made him throw him-
self by an impulse into harmony with her, and
he responded regally. He scented a romance.
He handed her five pounds.
His munificence caused her no apparent sur-
prise. " It is quite enough, thank you," she re-
marked quietly, as he announced the sum, lest
she should be unable to see it for herself.
While overtaking and conversing with her
he had not observed that the rising wind, which
had proceeded from puffing to growling and
from growling to screeching, with the accus-
tomed suddenness of its changes here, had at
length brought what it promised by these
vagaries — rain. The drops, which had at first
hit their left cheeks like the pellets of a pop-
gun, soon assumed the character of a raking
fusillade from the bank adjoining, one shot of
30
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
which was sufficiently smart to go through
Jocelyn's sleeve. The tall girl turned, and
seemed to be somewhat concerned at an onset
which she had plainly not foreseen before her
starting.
" We must take shelter," said Jocelyn.
" But where?" said she.
To windward was the long, monotonous
bank, too obtusely piled to afford a screen,
over which they could hear the canine crunch-
ing of pebbles by the sea without ; on their
right stretched the inner bay or roadstead, the
distant riding-lights of the ships, now dim and
glimmering; behind them a faint spark here
and there in the lower sky showed where the
island rose ; before there was nothing definite,
and could be nothing, till they reached a pre-
carious wood bridge, a mile farther on, Henry
the Eighth's Castle being a little farther still.
But just within the summit of the bank,
whither it had apparently been hauled to be
out of the way of the waves, was one of the
local boats called lerrets, bottom upward. As
soon as they saw it the pair ran up the pebbly
slope towards it by a simultaneous impulse.
They then perceived that it had lain there a
long time, and were comforted to find it capa-
31
THE WELL-BELOVED
ble of affording more protection than anybody
would have expected from a distant view. It
formed a shelter or store for the fishermen, the
boom of the lerret being tarred as a roof. By
creeping under the bows, which overhung the
bank on props to leeward, they made their way
within, where, upon some thwarts, oars, and
other fragmentary woodwork, lay a mass of
dry netting — a whole seine. Upon this they
scrambled and sat down, through inability to
stand upright.
A CHARGE
The rain fell upon the keel of the old lerret
like corn thrown in handfuls by some colossal
sower, and darkness set in to its full shade.
They crouched so close to each other that
he could feel her furs against him. Neither
had spoken since they left the roadway till
she said, with attempted unconcern : " This is
unfortunate."
He admitted that it was, and found, after a
few further remarks had passed, that she cer-
tainly had been weeping, there being a sup-
pressed gasp of passionateness in her utterance
now and then.
" It is more unfortunate for you, perhaps,
than for me," he said, " and I am very sorry
that it should be so."
She replied nothing to this, and he added
that it was rather a desolate place for a woman,
alone and afoot. He hoped nothing serious
c 33
THE WELL-BELOVED
had happened to drag her out at such an un-
toward time.
At first she seemed not at all disposed to
show any candor on her own affairs, and he
was left to conjecture as to her history and
name, and how she could possibly have known
him. But, as the rain gave not the least sign
of cessation, he observed : " I think we shall
have to go back."
" Never !" said she, and the firmness with
which she closed her lips was audible in the
word.
"Why not?" he inquired.
" There are good reasons."
" I cannot understand how you should know
me, while I have no knowledge of you."
" Oh, but you know me — about me, at least."
" Indeed I don't. How should I ? You are
a kimberlin."
" I am not. I am a real islander — or was,
rather. . . . Haven't you heard of the Best-
Bed Stone Company?"
" I should think so ! They tried to ruin my
father by getting away his trade — or, at least,
the founder of the company did — old Ben-
comb.5'
" He's my father !"
34
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
11 Indeed ! I am sorry I should have spoken
so disrespectfully of him, for I never knew him
personally. After making over his large busi-
ness to the company, he retired, I believe, to
London?"
" Yes. Our house, or rather his, not mine,
is at South Kensington. We have lived there
for years. But we have been tenants of Syl-
vania Castle, on the island here, this season.
We took it for a month or two of the owner,
who is away."
" Then I have been staying quite near you,
Miss Bencomb. My father's is a compara-
tively humble residence hard by."
" But he could afford a much bigger one if
he chose."
" You have heard so ? I don't know. He
doesn't tell me much of his affairs."
" My father," she burst out, suddenly, " is
always scolding me for my extravagance !
And he has been doing it to-day more than
ever. He said I go shopping in town to
simply a diabolical extent, and exceed my
allowance !"
" Was that this evening?"
11 Yes. And then it reached such a storm
of passion between us that I pretended to re-
35
THE WELL-BELOVED
tire to my room for the rest of the evening,
but I slipped out, and I am never going back
home again."
"What will you do?"
" I shall go first to my aunt in London, and
if she won't have me, I'll work for a living. I
have left my father forever ! What I should
have done if I had not met you I cannot tell —
I must have walked all the way to London, I
suppose. Now I shall take the train as soon
as I reach the mainland."
" If you ever do in this hurricane."
" I must sit here till it stops."
And there on the nets they sat. Pierston
knew of old Bencomb as his father's bitterest
enemy, who had made a great fortune by swal-
lowing up the small stone-merchants, but had
found Jocelyn's sire a trifle too big to digest —
the latter being, in fact, the chief rival of the
Best -Bed Company to that day. Jocelyn
thought it strange that he should be thrown
by fate into a position to play the son of the
Montagues to this daughter of the Capulets.
As they talked there was a mutual instinct
to drop their voices, and on this account the
roar of the storm necessitated their drawing
quite close together. Something tender came
36
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
into their tones as quarter-hour after quarter-
hour went on, and they forgot the lapse of
time. It was quite late when she started up,
alarmed at her position.
" Rain or no rain, I can stay no longer," she
said.
" Do come back," said he, taking her hand.
" I'll return with you. My train has gone."
u No ; I shall go on, and get a lodging in
Budmouth town, if ever I reach it."
" It is so late that there will be no house
open, except a little place near the station,
where you won't care to stay. However, if
you are determined, I will show you the way.
I cannot leave you. It would be too awkward
for you to go there alone."
She persisted, and they started through the
twanging and spinning storm. The sea rolled
and rose so high on their left, and was so near
them on their right, that it seemed as if they
were traversing its bottom, like the Children
of Israel. Nothing but the frail bank of peb-
bles divided them from the raging gulf with-
out, and at every bang of the tide against it
the ground shook, the shingle clashed, the
spray rose vertically and was blown over
their heads. Quantities of sea-water trickled
37
THE WELL-BELOVED
through the pebble wall, and ran In rivulets
across their path to join the sea within. The
" island " was an island still.
They had not realized the force of the ele-
ments till now. Pedestrians had often been
blown into the sea hereabout and drowned,
owing to a sudden breach in the bank ; which,
however, had something of a supernatural
power in being able to close up and join
itself together again after such disruption,
like Satan's form when, cut in two by the
sword of Michael,
" The ethereal substance closed,
Not long divisible."
Her clothing offered more resistance to the
wind than his, and she was consequently in
the greater danger. It was impossible to re-
fuse his proffered aid. First he gave his arm,
but the wind tore them apart as easily as
coupled cherries. He steadied her bodily by
encircling her waist with his arm ; and she
made no objection.
Somewhere about this time — it might have
been sooner, it might have been later — he be-
came conscious of a sensation which, in its in-
38
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
cipient and unrecognized form, had lurked
within him from some unnoticed moment
when he was sitting close to his new friend
under the lerret. Though a young man, he
was too old a hand not to know what this
was, and felt alarmed — even dismayed. It
meant a possible migration of the Well-Be-
loved. The thing had not, however, taken
place ; and he went on thinking how soft and
warm the lady was in her fur covering, as he
held her so tightly ; the only dry spots in the
clothing of either being her left side and his
right, where they excluded the rain by their
¥ mutual pressure.
As soon as they had crossed the ferry
bridge there was a little more shelter, but he
did- not relinquish his hold till she requested
him. They passed the ruined castle, and,
having left the island far behind them, trod
mile after mile till they drew near to the out-
skirts of the neighboring watering-place. Into
it they plodded without pause, crossing the
harbor bridge about midnight, wet to the skin.
He pitied her, and, while he wondered at it,
admired her determination. The houses fac-
ing the bay now sheltered them completely,
and they reached the vicinity of the new rail-
39
THE WELL-BELOVED
way terminus (which the station was at this
date) without difficulty. As he had said,
there was only one house open hereabout, a
little temperance inn, where the people stayed
up for the arrival of the morning mail and
passengers from the Channel boats. Their
application for admission led to the with-
drawal of a bolt, and they stood within the
gaslight of the passage.
He could see now that though she was such
a fine figure, quite as tall as himself, she
was but in the bloom of young womanhood
in years. Her face was certainly striking,
though rather by its imperiousness than its
beauty ; and the beating of the wind and
rain and spray had inflamed her cheeks to
peony hues.
She persisted in the determination to go on
to London by an early morning train, and
he therefore offered advice on lesser matters
only. " In that case," he said, "you must go
up to your room and send down your things,
that they may be dried by the fire immediate-
ly, or they will not be ready. I will tell the
servant to do this, and send you up something
to eat."
She assented to his proposal, without, how-
40
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
ever, showing any marks of gratitude ; and
when she had gone Pierston despatched her
the light supper promised by the sleepy girl
who was " night porter " at this establishment.
He felt ravenously hungry himself, and set
about drying his clothes as well as he could
and eating at the same time.
At first he was in doubt what to do, but
soon decided to stay where he was till the
morrow. By the aid of some temporary
wraps, and some slippers from the cupboard,
he was contriving to make himself comfortable
when the maid-servant came downstairs with
a damp armful of woman's raiment.
Pierston withdrew from the fire. The maid-
servant knelt down before the blaze and held
up with extended arms one of the habiliments
of the Juno upstairs, from which a cloud of
steam began to rise. As she knelt, the girl
nodded forward, recovered herself, and nod-
ded again.
" You are sleepy, my girl," said Pierston.
" Yes, sir ; I have been up a long time.
When nobody comes I lie down on the couch
in the other room."
** Then I'll relieve you of that ; go and lie
down in the other room, just as if we were not
41
THE WELL-BELOVED
here. I'll dry the clothing and put the articles
here in a heap, which you can take up to the
young lady in the morning."
The " night porter " thanked him and left
the room, and he soon heard her snoring from
the adjoining apartment. Then Jocelyn open-
ed proceedings, overhauling the robes and ex-
tending them one by one. As the steam
went up he fell into a reverie. He again be-
came conscious of the change which had been
initiated during the walk. The Well-Beloved
was moving house — had gone over to the
wearer of this attire.
In the course of ten minutes he adored
her.
And how about little Avice Caro? He did
not think of her as before.
He was not sure that he had ever seen the
real Beloved lit that friend of his youth, so-
licitous as he was for her welfare. But, lov-
ing her or not, he perceived that the spirit,
emanation, idealism, which called itself his
Love was flitting stealthily from some re-
moter figure to the near one in the chamber
overhead.
Avice had not kept her engagement to meet
him in the lonely ruin, fearing her own im-
42
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
aginings. But he, in fact, more than she, had
been educated out of the island innocence
that had upheld old manners ; and this was
the strange consequence of Avice's misappre-
hension.
VI
ON THE BRINK
Miss Bencomb was leaving the hotel for
the railway, which was quite near at hand,
and had only recently been opened, as if on
purpose for this event. At Jocelyn's sugges-
tion she wrote a message to inform her father
that she had gone to her aunt's, with a view to
allaying anxiety and deterring pursuit. They
walked together to the platform and bade
each other good-bye ; each obtained a ticket
independently, and Jocelyn got his luggage
from the cloak-room.
On the platform they encountered each
other again, and there was a light in their
glances at each other which said, as by a
flash-telegraph, " We are bound for the same
town, why not enter the same compartment?"
They did.
She took a corner seat, with her back to the
engine ; he sat opposite. The guard looked
44
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
in, thought they were lovers, and did not show
other travellers into that compartment. They
talked on strictly ordinary matters — what she
thought he did not know— but at every stop-
ping station he dreaded intrusion. Before
they were half way to London the event he
had just begun to realize was a patent fact.
The Beloved was again embodied ; she filled
every fibre and curve of this woman's form.
Drawing near the great London station was
like drawing near doomsday. How should he
leave her in the turmoil of a crowded city
street ? She seemed quite unprepared for the
rattle of the scene. He asked her where her
aunt lived.
" Bayswater," said Miss Bencomb.
He called a cab and proposed that she
should share it till they arrived at her aunt's,
whose residence lay not much out of the way
to his own. Try as he would, he could not
ascertain if she understood his feelings, but
she assented to his offer and entered the ve-
hicle.
" We are old friends," he said, as they drove
onward.
" Indeed we are," she answered, without
smiling.
45
THE WELL-BELOVED
"But hereditarily we are mortal enemies,
dear Juliet."
" Yes — What did you say ?"
" I said Juliet."
She laughed in a half-proud way, and mur-
mured : " Your father is my father's ene-
my, and my father is mine. Yes, it is so."
And then their eyes caught each other's
glance.
" My queenly darling !" he burst out ; " in-
stead of going to your aunt's, will you come
and marry me?"
A flush covered her over, which seemed akin
to a flush of rage. It was not exactly that,
but she was excited. She did not answer, and
he feared he had mortally offended her dig-
nity. Perhaps she had only made use of him
as a convenient aid to her intentions. How-
ever, he went on :
" Your father would not be able to reclaim
you then ! After all, this is not so precipitate
as it seems. You know all about me, my his-
tory, my prospects. I know all about you.
Our families have been neighbors on that isle
for hundreds of years, though you are now
such a London product."
" Will you ever be a Royal Academician ?"
46
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
she asked, musingly, her excitement having
calmed down.
" I hope to be — I will be, if you will be my
wife."
His companion looked at him long.
" Think what a short way out of your dif-
ficulty this would be," he continued. " No
bother about aunts, no fetching home by an
angry father."
It seemed to decide her. She yielded to his
embrace.
"How long will it take to marry?" Miss
Bencomb asked, by-and-by, with obvious self-
repression.
" We could do it to-morrow. I could get to
Doctors' Commons by noon to-day, and the li-
cense would be ready by to-morrow morning."
" I won't go to my aunt's, I will be an in-
dependent woman ! I have been reprimanded
as if I were a child of six. I'll be your wife
if it is as easy as you say."
They stopped the cab while they held a
consultation. Pierston had rooms and a studio
in the neighborhood of Campden Hill; but it
would be hardly desirable to take her thither
till they were married. They decided to go
to a hotel.
47
THE WELL-BELOVED
Changing their direction, therefore, they
went back to the Strand, and soon ensconced
themselves in one of the venerable old taverns
of Covent Garden, a precinct which in those
days was frequented by West-country people.
Jocelyn then left her and proceeded on his
errand eastward.
It was about three o'clock when, having ar-
ranged all preliminaries necessitated by this
sudden change of front, he began strolling
slowly back; he felt bewildered, and to walk
was a relief. Gazing occasionally into this
shop window and that, he called a hansom as
by an inspiration, and directed the driver to
" Mellstock Gardens." Arrived here, he rang
the bell of a studio, and in a minute or two it
was answered by a young man in shirt-sleeves,
about his own age, with a great smeared pal-
ette on his left thumb.
" Oh, you, Pierston ! I thought you were in
the country. Come in. I'm awfully glad of this.
I am here in town finishing off a painting for an
American, who wants to take it back with him."
Pierston followed his friend into the paint-
ing-room, where a pretty young woman was
sitting sewing. At a signal from the painter
she disappeared without speaking.
48
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
" I can see from your face you have some-
thing to say ; so we'll have it all to ourselves.
You are in some trouble? What '11 you drink?"
" Oh ! it doesn't matter what, so that it is
alcohol in some shape or form. . . . Now,
Somers, you must just listen to me, for I have
something to tell."
Pierston had sat down in an arm-chair, and
Somers had resumed his painting. When a
servant had brought in brandy to soothe Pier-
ston's nerves, and soda to take off the injurious
effects of the brandy, and milk to take off the
depleting effects of the soda, Jocelyn began
his narrative, addressing it rather to Somers's
Gothic chimneypiece, and Somers's Gothic
clock, and Somers's Gothic rugs, than to
Somers himself, who stood at his picture a
little behind his friend.
" Before I tell you what has happened to
mc," Pierston said, " I want to let you know
the manner of man I am."
" Lord — I know already !"
" Xo, you don't. It is a sort of thing one
doesn't like to talk of. I lie awake at night
thinking about it."
l,Xo!" said Somers, with more sympathy,
seeing that his friend was really troubled.
D 4Q
THE WELL-BELOVED
" I am under a curious curse or influence. I
am posed, puzzled, and perplexed by the leger-
demain of a creature — a deity rather; by Aph-
rodite, as a poet would put it, as I should put
it myself in marble. . . . But I forget — this is
not to be a deprecatory wail, but a defence
— a sort of Apologia pro vita med"
" That's better. Fire away!"
VII
HER EARLIER INCARNATIONS
" You, Somers, are not, I know, one of those
who continue to indulge in the world-wide,
fond superstition that the Beloved One of any
man always, or even usually, cares to remain
in one corporeal nook or shell for any great
length of time, however much he may wish her
to do so. If I am wrong, and you do still hold
to that ancient error — well, my story will seem
rather queer."
" Suppose you say some men, not any man."
"LA11 right — I'll say one man, this man only,
if you are so particular. We are a strange,
visionary race down where I come from, and
perhaps that accounts for it. The Beloved of
this one man, then, has had many incarnations
— too many to describe in detail. Each shape,
or embodiment, has been a temporary resi-
dence only, which she has entered, lived in a
while, and made her exit from, leaving the
51
THE WELL-BELOVED
substance, so far as I have been concerned, a
corpse, worse luck ! Now, there is no spirit-
ualistic nonsense in this — it is simple fact, put
in the plain form that the conventional public
are afraid of. So much for the principle."
" Good. Go on."
" Well ; the first embodiment of her occurred,
so nearly as I can recollect, when I was about
the age of nine. Her vehicle was a little blue-
eyed girl of eight or so, one of a family of
eleven, with flaxen hair about her shoulders,
which attempted to curl, but ignominiously
failed, hanging like chimney-crooks only. This
defect used rather to trouble me ; and was, I
believe, one of the main reasons of my Be-
loved's departure from that tenement. I can-
not remember with any exactness when the de-
parture occurred. I know it was after I had
kissed my little friend in a garden-seat on a
hot noontide, under a blue gingham umbrella,
which we had opened over us as we sat, that
passers through East Quarriers might not ob-
serve our marks of affection, forgetting that
our screen must attract more attention than
our persons.
" When the whole dream came to an end
through her father leaving the island, I thought
52
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
my Well-Beloved had gone forever (being then
in the unpractised condition of Adam at sight
of the first sunset). But she had not. Laura
had gone forever, but not my Beloved.
" For some months after I had done crying
for the flaxen-haired edition of her, my Love
did not reappear. Then she came suddenly,
unexpectedly, in a situation I should never
have predicted. I was standing on the curb-
stone of the pavement in Budmouth-Regis,
outside the Preparatory School, looking across
towards the sea, when a middle-aged gentle-
man on horseback, and beside him a young
lady, also mounted, passed down the street.
The girl turned her head, and — possibly be-
cause I was gaping at her in awkward admira-
tion, or smiling myself— smiled at me. Hav-
ing ridden a few paces, she looked round again
and smiled.
" It was enough, more than enough, to set
me on fire. I understood in a moment the in-
formation conveyed to me by my emotion —
the Well-Beloved had reappeared. This sec-
ond form in which it had pleased her to take
up her abode was quite a grown young wom-
an's, darker in complexion than the first.
Her hair, also worn in a knot, was of an or-
53
THE WELL-BELOVED
dinary brown, and so, I think, were her eyes,
but the niceties of her features were not to be
gathered so cursorily. However, there sat my
coveted one, re-embodied ; and, bidding my
schoolmates a hasty farewell as soon as I could
do so without suspicion, I hurried along the
Esplanade in the direction she and her father
had ridden. But they had put their horses to
a canter, and I could not see which way they
had gone. In the greatest misery I turned
down a side street, but was soon elevated to a
state of excitement by seeing the same pair
galloping towards me. Flushing up to my hair,
I stopped and heroically faced her as she
passed. She smiled again, but, alas! upon my
Love's cheek there was no blush of passion
for me."
Pierston paused and drank from his glass
as he lived for a brief moment in the scene he
had conjured up. Somers reserved his com-
ments, and Jocelyn continued:
" That afternoon I idled about the streets,
looking for her in vain. When I next saw
one of the boys who had been with me at
her first passing I stealthily reminded him
of the incident, and asked if he knew the
riders.
54
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
" ' Oh yes,' he said. ' That was Colonel
Targe and his daughter Elsie.'
" i How old do you think she is?' said I, a
sense of disparity in our ages disturbing my
mind.
" ' Oh — nineteen, I think they say. She's
going to be married the day after to-morrow
to Captain Popp, of the 501st, and they are
ordered off to India at once.'
" The grief which I experienced at this in-
telligence was such that at dusk I went away
to the edge of the harbor, intending to put
an end to myself there and then. But I had
been told that crabs had been found clinging
to the dead faces of persons who had fallen in
thereabout, leisurely eating them, and the idea
of such an unpleasant contingency deterred
me. I should state that the marriage of my
Beloved concerned me little ; it was her de-
parture that broke my heart. I never saw
her again.
" Though I had already learned that the
absence of the corporeal matter did not in-
volve the absence of the informing spirit, I
could scarce bring myself to believe that in
this case it was possible for her to return to my
view without the form she had last inhabited.
THE WELL-BELOVED
" But she did.
" It was not, however, till after a good space
of time, during which I passed through that
bearish age in boys, their early teens, when
girls are their especial contempt. I was about
seventeen, and was sitting one evening over a
cup of tea in a confectioner's at the very same
watering-place, when opposite me a lady took
her seat with a little girl. We looked at each
other a while, the child made advances, till I
said, ' She's a good little thing.'
" The lady assented, and made a further re-
mark.
" ' She has the soft fine eyes of her mother,'
said I.
" ' Do you think her eyes are good ?' asks
the lady, as if she had not heard what she
had heard most — the last three words of my
opinion.
"' Yes — for copies,' said I, regarding her.
" After this we got on very well. She in-
formed me that her husband had gone out in
a yacht, and I said it was a pity he didn't take
her with him for the airing. She gradually
disclosed herself in the character of a deserted
young wife, and later on I met her in the
street without the child. She was going to
56
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
the landing-stage to meet her husband, so she
told me ; but she did not know the way.
" I offered to show her, and did so. I will
not go into particulars, but I afterwards saw
her several times, and soon discovered that
the Beloved (as to whose whereabouts I had
been at fault so long) lurked here. Though
why she had chosen this tantalizing situation
of an inaccessible matron's form, when so
many others offered, it was beyond me to
discover. The whole affair ended innocently
enough, when the lady left the town with her
husband and child ; she seemed to regard our
acquaintance as a flirtation ; yet it was any-
thing but a flirtation for me !
" Why should I tell the rest of the tantaliz-
ing tale! After this the Well-Beloved put
herself in evidence with greater and greater
frequency, and it would be impossible for me
to give you details of her various incarnations.
She came nine times in the course of the two
or three ensuing years. Four times she mas-
queraded as a brunette, twice as a pale-haired
creature, and two or three times under a com-
plexion neither light nor dark. Sometimes
she was a tall, fine girl, but more often, I
57
THE WELL-BELOVED
think, she preferred to slip into the skin of a
lithe, airy being, of no great stature. I grew
so accustomed to these exits and entrances
that I resigned myself to them quite passive-
ly, talked to her, kissed her, corresponded
with her, ached for her, in each of her several
guises. So it went on until a month ago.
And then for the first time I was puzzled.
She either had, or she had not, entered the
person of Avice Caro, a young girl I had
known from infancy. Upon the whole, I have
decided that, after all, she did not enter the
form of Avice Caro, because I retain so great
a respect for her still."
Pierston here gave in brief the history of
his revived comradeship with Avice, the verge
of the engagement to which they had reached,
and its unexpected rupture by him merely
through his meeting with a woman into whom
the Well-Beloved unmistakably moved under
his very eyes — by name Miss Marcia Ben-
comb. He described their spontaneous de-
cision to marry offhand ; and then he put it
to Somers whether he ought to marry or
not — her or anybody else — in such circum-
stances.
" Certainly not," said Somers. " Though, if
58
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
anybody, little Avice. But not even her.
You are like other men, only rather worse.
Essentially all men are fickle like you, but
not with such perceptiveness."
" Surely fickle is not the word ? Fickle-
ness means getting weary of a thing while the
thing remains the same. But I have always
been faithful to the elusive creature whom I
have never been able to get a firm hold of,
unless I have done so now. And let me tell
you that her flitting from each to each in-
dividual has been anything but a pleasure for
me — certainly not a wanton game of my in-
stigation. To see the creature who has hith-
erto been perfect, divine, lose under your very
gaze the divinity which has informed her,
grow commonplace, turn from flame to ashes,
from a radiant vitality to a corpse, is anything
but a pleasure for any man, and has been
nothing less than a racking spectacle to my
sight. Each mournful emptied shape stands
ever after like the nest of some beautiful bird
from which the inhabitant has departed and
left it to fill with snow. I have been abso-
lutely miserable when I have looked in a face
for her I used to see there, and could see her
there no more."
59
THE WELL-BELOVED
"You ought not to marry," repeated Som-
ers.
" Perhaps I oughtn't to ! Though poor Mar-
da will be compromised, I'm afraid, if I don't.
. . . Was I not right in saying I am accursed
in this thing? Fortunately nobody but my-
self has suffered on account of it till now.
Knowing what to expect, I have seldom
ventured on a close acquaintance with any
woman, in fear of prematurely driving away
the dear one in her ; who, however, has in
time gone off just the same."
Pierston soon after took his leave. A
friend's advice on such a subject weighs lit-
tle. He quickly returned to Miss Bencomb.
She was different now. Anxiety had visi-
bly brought her down a notch or two, undone
a few degrees of that haughty curl which her
lip could occasionally assume. " How long
you have been away !" she said, with a show
of impatience.
" Never mind, darling. It is all arranged,"
said he. " We shall be able to marry in a few
days."
" Not to-morrow ?"
" We can't to-morrow. We have not been
here quite long enough."
60
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
" But how did the people at Doctors' Com-
mons know that ?"
" Well — I forgot that residence, real or as-
sumed, was necessary, and unfortunately ad-
mitted that we had only just arrived."
" Oh, how stupid ! But it can't be helped
now. I think, dear, I should have known
better, however."
VIII
TOO LIKE THE LIGHTNING •
They lived on at the hotel some days long-
er, eyed curiously by the chambermaids, and
burst in upon every now and then by the
waiters as if accidentally. When they were
walking together, mostly in back streets for
fear of being recognized, Marcia was often
silent, and her imperious face looked gloomy.
" Dummy !" he said, playfully, on one of
these occasions.
" I am vexed that by your admissions at
Doctors' Commons you prevented them giv-
ing you the license at once ! It is not nice,
my living on like this !"
" But we are going to marry, dear !"
" Yes," she murmured, and fell into reverie
again. " What a sudden resolve it was of
ours !" she continued. " I wish I could get
my father and mother's consent to our mar-
riage. . . . As we can't complete it for another
62
I
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
day or two, a letter might be sent to them
and their answer received. I have a mind to
write."
Pierston expressed his doubts of the wis-
dom of this course, which seemed to make
her desire it the more, and the result was a
tiff between them. " Since we are obliged to
delay it, I won't marry without their consent !"
she cried at last, passionately.
" Very well then, dear. Write," he said.
When they were again indoors she sat down
to a note, but after a while threw aside her
pen despairingly. " No ; I cannot do it !"
she said. " I can't bend my pride to such a
job. Will you write for me, Jocelyn?"
" I ? I don't see why I should be the one,
particularly as I think it premature."
" But you have not quarrelled with my
father as I have done."
"Well, no. But there is a long-standing
antagonism, which would make it odd in me
to write. Wait till we are married, and then
I will write. Not till then."
" Then I suppose I must. You don't know
my father. He might forgive me marrying
into any other family without his knowledge,
but he thinks so meanly of yours on account
63
THE WELL-BELOVED
of the trade rivalry that he would never par-
don till the day of his death my becoming a
Pierston secretly. I didn't see it at first."
This remark caused an unpleasant jar on
the mind of Pierston. Despite his indepen-
dent artistic position in London, he was
stanch to the simple old parent who had
stubbornly held out for so many years against
Bencomb's encroaching trade, and whose
money had educated and maintained Jocelyn
as an art-student in the best schools. So he
begged her to say no more about his family,
and she silently resumed her letter, giving
an address at a post-office, that their quar-
ters might not be discovered, at least just
yet.
No reply came by return of post ; but, rath-
er ominously, some letters for Marcia that had
arrived at her father's since her departure were
sent on in silence to the address given. She
opened them one by one, till, on reaaing the
last, she exclaimed, " Good gracious !" and
burst into laughter.
" What is it ?" asked Pierston.
Marcia began to read the letter aloud. It
came from a faithful lover of hers, a youthful
Jersey gentleman, who stated that he was soon
64
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
going to start for England to claim his dar-
ling, according to her plighted word.
She was half risible, half concerned. " What
shall I do ?" she said.
" Do ? My dear girl, it seems to me that
there is only one thing to do, and that a very
obvious thing. Tell him as soon as possible
that you are just on the point of marriage."
Marcia thereupon wrote out a reply to that
effect, Jocelyn helping her to shape the phrases
as gently as possible.
"I repeat" (her letter concluded) "that I
had quite forgotten ! I am deeply sorry ; but
that is the truth. I have told my intended
husband everything, and he is looking over
my shoulder as I write."
Said Jocelyn when he saw this set down :
" You might leave out the last few words.
They are rather an extra stab for the poor
boy."
"Stab? It is not that, dear. Why does he
want to come bothering me? Jocelyn, you
ought to be very proud that I have put you
in my letter at all. You said yesterday that
I was conceited in declaring I might have
married that science-man I told you of. But
now you see there was yet another available."
e 65
THE WELL-BELOVED
He, gloomily : " Well, I don't care to hear
about that. To my mind this sort of thing is
decidedly unpleasant, though you treat it so
lightly."
"Well," she pouted, "I have only done half
what you ha ye done !"
" What's that ?"
" I have only proved false through forgetful-
ness, but you have while remembering!"
" Oh yes ; of course you can use Avice Caro
as a retort. But don't vex me about her, and
make me do such an unexpected thing as re-
gret the falseness."
She shut her mouth tight, and her face
flushed.
The next morning there did come an answer
to the letter asking her parents' consent to her
union with him; but, to Marcia's amazement,
her father took a line quite other than the one
she had expected him to take. Whether she
had compromised herself or whether she had
not seemed a question for the future rather
than the present with him, a native islander,
born when old island marriage views prevailed
in families ; he was fixed in his disapproval of
her marriage with a hated Pierston. He did
not consent ; he would not say more till he
66
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
could see her ; if she had any sense at all she
would, if still unmarried, return to the home
from which she had evidently been enticed.
He would then see what he could do for
her in the desperate circumstances she had
made for herself ; otherwise he would do
nothing.
Pierston could not help being sarcastic at
her father's evidently low estimate of him and
his belongings ; and Marcia took umbrage at
his sarcasms.
" I am the one deserving of satire if any-
body," she said. " I begin to feel I was a fool-
ish girl to run away from a father for such a
trumpery reason as a little scolding because I
had exceeded my allowance."
" I advised you to go back, Marcia."
" In a sort of way; not in the right tone.
You spoke most contemptuously of my father
as a merchant."
" I couldn't speak otherwise of him than I
did, I'm afraid, knowing what — "
" What have you to say against him ?"
" Nothing — to you, Marcia, beyond what is
matter of common notoriety. Everybody
knows that at one time he made it the busi-
ness of his life to ruin my father; and the way
67
THE WELL-BELOVED
he alludes to me in that letter shows that his
enmity still continues."
" That miser ruined by an open-handed man
like my father !" said she. " It is like your
people's misrepresentations to say that."
Marcia's eyes flashed and her face burned
with an angry heat, the enhanced beauty which
this warmth might have brought being killed
by the rectilinear sternness of countenance
that came therewith.
" Marcia, this temper is too exasperating !
I could give you every step of the proceeding
in detail — anybody could — the getting the
quarries one by one, and everything, my father
only holding his own by the most desperate
courage. There is no blinking facts. Our
parents' relations are an ugly fact in the cir-
cumstances of us two people who want to mar-
ry, and we are just beginning to perceive it ;
and how we are going to get over it I cannot
tell."
She said, steadily, " I don't think we shall
get over it at all !"
"We may not — we may not — altogether,"
Pierston murmured, as he gazed at the fine
picture of scorn presented by his Juno's classi-
cal face and dark eyes.
6§
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
" Unless you beg my pardon for having be-
haved so !"
Pierston could not quite bring himself to see
that he had behaved badly to his too imperi-
ous lady, and declined to ask forgiveness for
what he had not done.
She thereupon left the room. Later in the
day she re-entered and broke a silence by say-
ing, bitterly : " I showed temper just now, as
you told me. But things have causes, and it
is perhaps a mistake that you should have de-
serted Avice for me. Instead of wedding
Rosaline, Romeo must needs go eloping with
Juliet. It was a fortunate thing for the affec-
tions of those two Veronese lovers that they
died when they did. In a short time the en-
mity of their families would have proved a
fruitful source of dissension ; Juliet would have
gone back to her people, he to his ; the sub-
ject would have split them as much as it splits
us.
Pierston laughed a little. But Marcia was
painfully serious, as he found at tea-time, when
she said that since his refusal to beg her par-
don she had been thinking over the matter
and had resolved to go to her aunt's, after all —
at any rate till her father could be induced to
69
THE WELL-BELOVED
agree to their union. Pierston was as chilled
by this resolve of hers as he was surprised
at her independence in circumstances which
usually make women the reverse. But he put
no obstacles in her way, and, with a kiss
strangely cold after their recent ardor, the
Romeo of the freestone Montagues went out
of the hotel, to avoid even the appearance of
coercing his Juliet of the rival house. When
he returned she was gone.
A correspondence began between these too
hastily pledged ones, and it was carried on in
terms of serious reasoning upon their awkward
situation on account of the family feud. They
saw their recent love as what it was :
"Too rash, too unadvised, too sudden;
Too like the lightning" . . .
They saw it with an eye whose calmness, cold-
ness, and, it must be added, wisdom, did not
promise well for their reunion.
Their debates were clinched by a final letter
from Marcia, sent from no other place than
her recently left home in the isle. She in-
formed him that her father had appeared sud-
denly at her aunt's, and had induced her to
70
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
go home with him. She had told her father
all the circumstances of their elopement, and
what mere accidents had caused it ; he had
persuaded her on what she had almost been
convinced of by their disagreement, that all
thought of their marriage should be at least
postponed for the present; any awkwardness,
and even scandal, being better than that they
should immediately unite themselves for life
on the strength of a two or three days' pas-
sion, and be the wretched victims of a situa-
tion they could never change.
Pierston saw plainly enough that he owed it
to her father being a born islander, with all
the ancient island notions of the sexes lying
underneath his acquired conventions, that the
stone-merchant did not immediately insist upon
the usual remedy for a daughter's precipitancy
of action, but preferred to await issues.
But the young man still thought that Marcia
herself, when her temper had quite cooled
and she was more conscious of her real posi-
tion, would return to him in spite of the family
hostility. There was no social reason against
such a step. In birth the pair were about on
one plane ; and though Marcia's family had
gained a start in the accumulation of wealth
7.
THE WELL-BELOVED
and in the beginnings of social distinction,
which lent color to the feeling that the advan-
tages of the match would be mainly on one
side, Pierston was a sculptor who might rise to
fame; so that potentially their marriage could
not be considered inauspicious for a woman
who, beyond being the probable heiress to a
considerable fortune, had no exceptional op-
portunities.
Thus, though disillusioned, he felt bound in
honor to remain on call at his London address
as long as there was the slightest chance of
Marcia's reappearance, or of the arrival of
some message requesting him to join her, that
they might, after all, go to the altar together.
Yet in the night he seemed to hear sardonic
voices and laughter in the wind at this devel-
opment of his little romance, and during the
slow and colorless days he had to sit and be-
hold the mournful departure of his Well-Be-
loved from the form he had lately cherished,
till she had almost vanished away. The exact
moment of her complete withdrawal Pierston
knew not, but not many lines of her were
longer discernible in Marcia's remembered
contours, nor many sounds of her in Marcia's
recalled accents. Their acquaintance, though
72
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
so fervid, had been too brief for such lin-
gering.
There came a time when he learned, through
a trustworthy channel, two pieces of news
affecting himself. One was the marriage of
Avice Caro with her cousin, the other that the
Bencombs had started on a tour round the
world, which was to include a visit to a rela-
tion of Mr. Bencomb's who was a banker in
San Francisco. Since retiring from his former
large business the stone- merchant had not
known what to do with his leisure, and finding
that travel benefited his health he had decided
to indulge himself thus. Although he was not
so informed, Pierston concluded that Marcia
had accompanied her parents, and he was more
than ever struck with what this signified — her
father's obstinate antagonism to her union
with one of his blood and name.
IX
FAMILIAR PHENOMENA IN THE DISTANCE
By degrees Pierston began to trace again
the customary lines of his existence ; and his
profession occupied him much as of old. The
next year or two only once brought him ti-
dings, through some residents at his former
home, of the movements of the Bencombs.
The extended voyage of Marcia's parents had
given them quite a zest for other scenes and
countries ; and it was said that her father, a
man still in vigorous health except at brief
intervals, was utilizing the outlook which his
cosmopolitanism afforded him by investing
capital in foreign undertakings. What he had
supposed turned out to be true ; Marcia was
with them ; and thus the separation of himself
and his nearly married wife by common con-
sent was likely to be a permanent one.
It seemed as if he would scarce ever again
discover the carnate dwelling-place of the
74
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
haunting minion of his imagination. Having
gone so near to matrimony with Marcia as
to apply for a license, he had felt for a long
while morally bound to her by the incipient
contract, and would not intentionally look
about him in search of the vanished Ideality.
Thus during the first year of Miss Bencomb's
absence, when absolutely bound to keep faith
with the elusive one's late incarnation if she
should return to claim him, this man of the
odd fancy would sometimes tremble at the
thought of what would become of his solemn
intention if the Phantom were suddenly to
disclose herself in an unexpected quarter and
seduce him before he was aware. Once or
twice he imagined that he saw her in the dis-
tance— at the end of a street, on the far sands
of a shore, in a window, in a meadow, at the
opposite side of a railway station ; but he de-
terminedly turned on his heel and walked the
other way.
During the many uneventful seasons that
followed Marcia's stroke of independence (for
which he was not without a secret admiration
at times), Jocelyn threw into plastic creations
that ever-bubbling spring of emotion which,
without some conduit into space, will surge
75
THE WELL-BELOVED
upward and ruin all but the greatest men. It
was probably owing to this, certainly not on
account of any care or anxiety for such a re-
sult, that he was successful in his art, success-
ful by a seemingly sudden spurt, which carried
him at one bound over the hinderances of
years.
He prospered without effort. He was
A.R.A.
But recognitions of this sort, social distinc-
tions, which he had once coveted so keenly,
seemed to have no utility for him now. By
the accident of being a bachelor he was float-
ing in society without any soul-anchorage or
shrine that he could call his own ; and, for
want of a domestic centre round which honors
might crystallize, they dispersed impalpably,
without accumulating and adding weight to
his material well-being.
He would have gone on working with his
chisel with just as much zest if his creations
had been doomed to meet no mortal eye but
his own. This indifference to the popular re-
ception of his dream-figures lent him a curious
artistic aplomb that carried him through the
gusts of opinion without suffering them to dis-
turb his inherent bias.
76
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
The study of beauty was his only joy for
years onward. In the streets he would ob-
serve a face, or a fraction of a face, which
seemed to express to a hair's-breadth in mu-
table flesh what he was at that moment wish-
ing to express in durable shape. He would
dodge and follow the owner like a detective;
in omnibus, in cab, in steamboat, through
crowds, into shops, churches, theatres, public-
houses, and slums — mostly, when at close
quarters, to be disappointed for his pains.
In these professional beauty-chases he some-
times cast his eye across the Thames to the
wharves on the south side, and to that partic-
ular one whereat his father's tons of freestone
were daily landed from the ketches of the
south coast. He could occasionally discern
the white blocks lying there, vast cubes so
persistently nibbled by his parent from his
island rock in the English Channel that it
seemed as if in time it would be nibbled all
avvay.
One thing it passed him to understand — on
what field of observation the poets and philos-
ophers based their assumption that the pas-
sion of love was intensest in youth and burned
lower as maturity advanced. It was possibly
77
THE WELL-BELOVED
because of his utter domestic loneliness that,
during the productive interval which followed
the first years of Marcia's departure, when he
was drifting along from five - and - twenty to
eight-and-thirty, Pierston occasionally loved
with an ardor — though, it is true, also with
a self-control — unknown to him when he was
green in judgment.
His whimsical isle -bred fancy had grown
to be such an emotion that the Well-Beloved
— now again visible — was always existing
somewhere near him. For months he would
find her on the stage of a theatre ; then she
would flit away, leaving the poor, empty car-
cass that had lodged her to mumm on as best
it could without her — a sorry lay figure to his
eyes, heaped with imperfections and sullied
with commonplace. She would reappear, it
might be, in an at first unnoticed lady — met
at some fashionable evening-party, exhibition,
bazaar, or dinner — to flit from her, in turn,
after a few months, and stand as a graceful
shop-girl at some large drapery warehouse
into which he had strayed on an unaccus-
tomed errand. Then she would forsake this
figure and redisclose herself in the guise of
78
A YOUNG MAN OF TWENTY
some popular authoress, piano-player, or fld-
dleress, at whose shrine he would worship for
perhaps a twelvemonth. Once she was a
dancing-girl at the Royal Moorish Palace of
Varieties, though during her whole continu-
ance at that establishment he never once ex-
changed a word with her, nor did she first or
last ever dream of his existence. He knew
that a ten minutes' conversation in the wings
with the substance would send the elusive
haunter scurrying fearfully away into some
other even less accessible mask-figure.
She was a blonde, a brunette, tall, petite,
svelte, straight-featured, full, curvilinear. Only
one quality remained unalterable — her insta-
bility of tenure. In Borne's phrase, nothing
was permanent in her but change.
"It is odd," he said to himself, "that this
experience of mine, or idiosyncrasy, or what-
ever it is, which would be sheer waste of time
for other men, creates sober business for me."
For all these dreams he translated into plas-
ter, and found that by them he was hitting a
public taste he had never deliberately aimed
at and mostly despised. He was, in short, in
danger of drifting away from a solid artistic
reputation to a popularity which mi^ht possi-
79
THE WELL-BELOVED
bly be as brief as it would be brilliant and ex
citing.
"You will be caught some day, my friend,'
Somers would occasionally observe to him.
" I don't mean to say entangled in anything
discreditable, for I admit that you are in prac-
tice as ideal as in theory. I mean the process
will be reversed. Some woman, whose Well-
Beloved flits about as yours does now, will
catch your eye, and you'll stick to her like a
limpet, while she follows her Phantom and
leaves you to ache as you will."
" You may be right ; but I think you are
wrong," said Pierston. " As flesh she dies
daily, like the Apostle's corporeal self ; be-
cause when I grapple with the reality she's no
longer in it, so that I cannot stick to one in-
carnation if I would."
" Wait till you are older," said Somers.
PART SECOND
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
' ' Since Love will needs that I shall love,
Of very force I must agree :
And since no chance may it remove,
In wealth and in adversity
I shalt alway myself apply
To serve and suffer patiently."
—Sir T. Wyatt.
THE OLD PHANTOM BECOMES DISTINCT
In the course of these long years Pierston's
artistic emotions were abruptly suspended by
the news of his father's sudden death at Sand-
bourne, whither the stone-merchant had gone
for a change of air by the advice of his phy-
sician.
Mr. Pierston, senior, it must be admitted,
had been something miserly in his home life,
as Marcia had so rashly reminded his son.
But he had never stinted Jocelyn. He had
been rather a hard taskmaster, though as a
paymaster trustworthy ; a ready-money man,
just and ungenerous. To every one's sur-
prise, the capital he had accumulated in the
stone trade was of large amount for a busi-
ness so unostentatiously carried on — much
larger than Jocelyn had ever regarded as pos-
sible. While the son had been modelling and
chipping his ephemeral fancies into perennial
83
THE WELL-BELOVED
shapes the father had been persistently chisel-
ling for half a century at the crude original
matter of those shapes, the stern, isolated rock
in the Channel ; and by the aid of his cranes
and pulleys, his trolleys and his boats, had
sent off his spoil to all parts of Great Britain.
When Jocelyn had wound up everything and
disposed of the business, as recommended by
his father's will, he found himself enabled to
add about eighty thousand pounds to the
twelve thousand which he already possessed
from professional and other sources.
After arranging for the sale of some free-
hold properties in the island other than quar-
ries— for he did not intend to reside there —
he returned to town. He often wondered
what had become of Marcia. He had prom-
ised never to trouble her ; nor for a whole
twenty years had he done so ; though he had
often sighed for her as a friend of sterling
common-sense in practical difficulties.
Her parents were, he believed, dead ; and
she, he knew, had never gone back to the isle.
Possibly she had formed some new tie abroad,
and had made it next to impossible to dis-
cover her by her old name.
A reposeful time ensued. Almost his first
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
entry into society after his father's death oc-
curred one evening when, for want of knowing
what better to do, he responded to an invita-
tion sent by one of the few ladies of rank
whom he numbered among his friends, and set
out in a cab for the square wherein she lived
during three or four months of the year.
The hansom turned the corner, and he ob-
tained a raking view of the houses along the
north side, of which hers was one, with the
familiar linkman at the door. There were
Chinese lanterns, too, on the balcony. He
perceived in a moment that the customary
" small and early " reception had resolved it-
self on this occasion into something very like
great and late. He remembered that there
had just been a political crisis, which account-
ed for the enlargement of the Countess of
ChannelclifTe's assembly ; for hers was one of
the neutral or non-political houses at which
party politics are more freely agitated than at
the professedly party gatherings.
There was such a string of carriages that
Pierston did not wait to take his turn at the
door, but unobtrusively alighted some yards
off and walked forward. He had to pause a
moment behind the wall of spectators which
85
THE WELL-BELOVED
barred his way, and as he paused some ladies
in white cloaks crossed from their carriages to
the door on the carpet laid for the purpose.
He had not seen their faces, nothing of them
but vague forms, and yet he was suddenly
seized with a presentiment. Its gist was that
he might be going to re-encounter the Well-
Beloved that night ; after her recent long hid-
ing she meant to reappear and intoxicate him.
That liquid sparkle of her eye, that lingual
music, that' turn of the head, how well he
knew it all, despite the many superficial
changes ! and how instantly he would recog-
nize it under whatever complexion, contour,
accent, height, or carriage it might choose to
masquerade !
Pierston's other conjecture, that the night
was to be a lively political one, received con-
firmation as soon as he reached the hall,
where a simmer of excitement was perceptible '
as surplus or overflow from above down the
staircase — a feature which he had always no-
ticed to be present when any climax or sensa-
tion had been reached in the world of party
and faction.
" And where have you been keeping your-
self so long, young man ?" said his hostess,
86
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
archly, when he had shaken hands with her.
(Pierston was always regarded as a young
man, though he was now about forty.) " Oh
yes, of course, I remember," she added, look-
ing serious in a moment at thought of his loss.
The Countess was a woman with a good-
natured manner, verging on that oft-claimed
feminine quality, humor, and was quickly
sympathetic.
She then began to tell him of a scandal in
the political side to which she nominally be-
longed, one that had come out of the present
crisis; and that, as for herself, she had sworn
to abjure politics forever on account of it, so
that he was to regard her forthwith as a more
neutral householder than ever. By this time
some more people had surged upstairs, and
Pierston prepared to move on.
"You are looking for somebody — I can see
that," said she.
" Yes — a lady," said Pierston.
"Tell me her name, and I'll try to think if
she's here."
" I cannot ; I don't know it," he said.
" Indeed ! What is she like?"
" I cannot describe her, not even her com-
plexion or dress."
87
THE WELL-BELOVED
Lady Channelcliffe looked a pout, as if she
thought he were teasing her, and he moved on
in the current. The fact was that, for a moment,
Pierston fancied he had made the sensational
discovery that the One he was in search of
lurked in the person of the very hostess he
had conversed with, who was charming always,
and particularly charming to-night ; he was
just feeling an incipient consternation at the
possibility of such a jade's trick in his Beloved,
who had once before chosen to embody her-
self as a married woman, though happily at
that time with no serious results. However,
he felt that he had been mistaken, and that
the fancy had been solely owing to the highly
charged electric condition in which he had
arrived by reason of his recent isolation.
The whole set of rooms formed one great
utterance of the opinions of the hour. The
gods of party were present with their em-
battled seraphim, but the brilliancy of manner
and form in the handling of public questions
was only less conspicuous than the paucity of
original ideas. No principles of wise govern-
ment had place in any mind, a blunt and jolly
personalism as to the Ins and Outs animating
all. But Jocelyn's interest did not run in this
88
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
stream ; he was like a stone in a purling brook,
waiting for some peculiar floating object to
be brought towards him and to stick upon his
mental surface.
Thus looking for the next new version of
the fair figure, he did not consider at the
moment, though he had done so at other times,
that this presentiment of meeting her was, of
all presentiments, just the sort of one to work
out its own fulfilment.
He looked for her in the knot of persons
gathered round a past prime-minister, who was
standing in the middle of the largest room dis-
coursing in the genial, almost jovial, manner
natural to him at these times. The two or
three ladies forming his audience had been
joined by another in black and white, and it
was on her that Pierston's attention was di-
rected, as well as the great statesman's, whose
first sheer gaze at her, expressing " Who are
you ?" almost audibly, changed into an inter-
ested, listening look as the few words she
spoke were uttered — for the minister differed
from many of his standing in being extremely
careful not to interrupt a timid speaker, giving
way in an instant if anybody else began with
him. Nobody knew better than himself that
89
THE WELL-BELOVED
all may learn, and his manner was that of an
unconceited man who could catch an idea
readily, even if he could not undertake to
create one.
The lady told her little story — whatever it
was Jocelyn could not hear it — the statesman
laughed " Haugh-haugh-haugh !"
The lady blushed. Jocelyn, wrought up to
a high tension by the aforesaid presentiment
that his Shelleyan "One-shape-of-many-names"
was about to reappear, paid little heed to the
others, watching for a full view of the lady
who had won his attention.
That lady remained for the present partially
screened by her neighbors. A diversion was
caused by Lady ChannelclifTe bringing up
somebody to present to the ex-minister ; the
ladies got mixed, and Jocelyn lost sight of the
one whom he was beginning to suspect as the
stealthily returned absentee.
He looked for her in a kindly young lady of
the house, his hostess's relation, who appeared
to more advantage that night than she had
ever done before — in a sky-blue dress, which
had nothing between it and the fair skin of her
neck, lending her an unusually soft and sylph-
like aspect. She saw him, and they converged.
90
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
Her look of " What do you think of me now ?"
was suggested, he knew, by the thought that
the last time they met she had appeared un-
der the disadvantage of mourning clothes, on
a wet day, in a country-house where every-
body was cross.
" I have some new photographs, and I want
you to tell me whether they are good," she
said. " Mind, you are to tell me truly, and no
favor."
She produced the pictures from an adjoining
drawer, and they sat down together upon an
ottoman for the purpose of examination. The
portraits, taken by the last fashionable photog-
rapher, were very good, and he told her so ;
but as he spoke and compared them his mind
was fixed on something else than the mere
judgment. He wondered whether the elusive
one were indeed in the frame of this girl.
He looked up at her. To his surprise, her
mind, too, was on other things bent than on
the pictures. Her eyes were glancing away to
distant people ; she was apparently consider-
ing the effect she was producing upon them by
this cozy tete-a-tete with Pierston, and upon
one in particular, a man of thirty, of military
appearance, whom Pierston did not know.
91
THE WELL-BELOVED
Quite convinced now that no phantom belong-
ing to him was contained in the outlines of the
present young lady, he could coolly survey her
as he responded. They were both doing the
same thing — each was pretending to be deeply
interested in what the other was talking about,
the attention of the two alike flitting away to
other corners of the room even when the very
point of their discourse was pending.
No, he had not seen her yet. He was not
going to see her, apparently, to-night ; she was
scared away by the twanging political atmos-
phere. But he still moved on searchingly,
hardly heeding certain spectral imps other than
Aphroditean who always haunted these places,
and jeeringly pointed out that under the white
hair of this or that ribboned old man, with a
forehead grown wrinkled over treaties which
had swayed the fortunes of Europe, with a
voice which had numbered sovereigns among
its respectful listeners, might be a heart that
would go inside a nutshell ; that beneath this
or that white rope of pearl and pink bosom
might lie the half-lung which had, by hook or
by crook, to sustain its possessor above ground
till the wedding-day.
At that moment he encountered his amiable
92
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
host, and almost simultaneously caught sight
of the lady who had at first attracted him and
then had disappeared. Their eyes met, far off
as they were from each other. Pierston laughed
inwardly; it was only in ticklish excitement
as to whether this was to prove a true trou-
vaille', and with no instinct to mirth ; for when
under the eyes of his Jill-o'-the-Wisp he was
more inclined to palpitate like a sheep in a fair.
However, for the minute he had to converse
with his host, Lord Channelcliffe, and almost
the first thing that friend said to him was,
" Who is that pretty woman in the black dress
with the white fluff about it and the pearl
necklace?"
" I don't know," said Jocelyn, with incipient
jealousy ; " I was just going to ask the same
thing."
"Oh, we shall find out presently, I suppose.
I dare say my wife knows." They had parted,
when a hand came upon his shoulder. Lord
Channelcliffe had turned back for an instant :
" I find she is the granddaughter of my father's
old friend, the last Lord Hengistbury. Her
name is Mrs. — Mrs. Pine-Avon ; she lost her
husband two or three years ago, very shortly
after their marriage."
93
THE WELL-BELOVED
Lord Channelcliffe became absorbed into
some adjoining dignitary of the Church, and
Pierston was left to pursue his quest alone. A
young friend of his — the Lady Mabella But-
termead, who appeared in a cloud of muslin
and was going on to a ball — had been brought
against him by the tide. A warm-hearted,
emotional girl was Lady Mabella, who laughed
at the humorousness of being alive. She asked
him whither he was bent, and he told her.
" Oh yes, I know her very well !" said Lady
Mabella eagerly. " She told me one day that
she particularly wished to meet you. Poor
thing — so sad — she lost her husband. Well, it
was a long time ago now, certainly! Women
ought not to marry and lay themselves open to
such catastrophes, ought they, Mr. Pierston?
/ never shall. I am determined never to run
such a risk! Now, do you think I shall?"
" Marry? Oh no; never," said Pierston, dryly.
" That's very comforting." But Mabella was
scarcely comfortable under the answer, even
though jestingly returned, and she added:
" But sometimes I think I may, just for the fun
of it. . . . Now we'll steer across to her and
catch her, and I'll introduce you. But we shall
never get to her at this rate !"
94
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
" Never, unless we adopt ' the ugly rush,'
like the citizens who follow the Lord Mayor's
Show."
They talked, and inched towards the de-
sired one, who, as she discoursed with a neigh-
bor, seemed one of those
" Female forms, whose gestures beam with mind,"
seen by the poet in his Vision of the Golden
City of Islam.
Their progress was continually checked.
Pierston was, as he had sometimes seemed
to be, in a dream, unable to advance towards
the object of pursuit unless he could have
gathered up his feet into the air. After ten
minutes given to a preoccupied regard of
shoulder-blades, back hair, glittering head-
gear, neck-napes, moles, hairpins, pearl-pow-
der, pimples, minerals cut into facets of many-
colored rays, necklace-clasps, fans, stays, the
seven styles of elbow and arm, the thirteen
varieties of ear, and by using the toes of his
dress-boots as colters, with which he ploughed
his way and that of Lady Mabella in the
direction they were aiming at, he drew near
to Mrs. Pine-Avon, who was drinking a cup
of tea in the back drawing-room.
05
THE WELL-BELOVED
" My dear Nichola, we thought we should
never get to you, because it is worse to-night,
owing to these dreadful politics ! But we've
done it." And she proceeded to tell her
friend of Pierston's existence hard by.
It seemed that the widow really did wish
to know him, and that Lady Mabella Butter-
mead had not indulged in one of the too fre-
quent inventions of that kind. When the
youngest of the trio had made the pair ac-
quainted with each other she left them to
talk to a younger man than the sculptor.
Mrs. Pine- Avon's black velvets and silks,
with their white accompaniments, finely set
off the exceeding fairness of her neck and
shoulders, which, though unwhitened artifi-
cially, were without a speck or blemish of the
least degree. The gentle, thoughtful creature
she had looked from a distance she now
proved herself to be ; she held also sound
rather than current opinions on the plastic
arts, and was the first intellectual woman he
had seen there that night, except one or two
as aforesaid.
They soon became well acquainted, and at
a pause in their conversation noticed the new
excitement caused by the arrival of some late-
96
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
comers with more news. The latter had been
brought by a rippling, bright-eyed lady in
black, who made the men listen to her,
whether they would or no.
" I am glad I am an outsider," said Joce-
lyn's acquaintance, now seated on a sofa be-
side which he was standing. " I wouldn't be
like my cousin over there for the world.
She thinks her husband will be turned out
at the next election, and she's quite wild."
" Yes ; it is mostly the women who are the
gamesters ; the men only the cards. The pity
is that politics are looked on as being a game
for politicians, just as cricket is a game for
cricketers ; not as the serious duties of politi-
cal trustees."
" How few of us ever think or feel that ' the
nation of every country dwells in the cottage,'
as somebody says !"
" Yes ; though I wonder to hear you quote
that."
"Oh — I am of no party, though my relations
are. There can be only one best course at all
times, and the wisdom of the nation should be
directed to finding it, instead of zigzagging in
two courses, according to the will of the party
which happens to have the upper hand."
g 97
THE WELL-BELOVED
Having started thus, they found no diffi-
culty in agreeing on many points. When
Pierston went down -stairs from that assem-
bly at a quarter to one, and passed under the
steaming nostrils of an ambassador's horses
to a hansom which waited for him against the
railing of the square, he had an impression
that the Beloved had re -emerged from the
shadows, without any hint or initiative from
him — to whom, indeed, such re-emergence
was an unquestionably awkward thing.
In this he was aware, however, that though
it might be now, as heretofore, the Loved who
danced before him, it was the goddess behind
her who pulled the string of that Jumping Jill.
He had lately been trying his artist hand
again on the Dea's form in every conceivable
phase and mood. He had become a one-part
man — a presenter of her only. But his efforts
had resulted in failures. In her implacable
vanity she might be punishing him anew for
presenting her so deplorably.
II
SHE DRAWS CLOSE AND SATISFIES
He could not forget Mrs. Pine-Avon's eyes,
though he remembered nothing of her other
facial details. They were round, inquiring,
luminous. How that chestnut hair of hers
had shone ! It required no tiara to set it off,
like that of the dowager he had seen there,
v/ho had put ten thousand pounds upon her
head to make herself look worse than she
would have appeared with the ninepenny mus-
lin cap of a servant-woman.
Now the question was, ought he to see her
again ? He had his doubts. But, unfortu-
nately for discretion, just when he was com-
ing out of the rooms he had encountered an
old lady of seventy, his friend Mrs. Bright-
walton — the Honorable Mrs. Brightwalton —
and she had hastily asked him to dinner for
the day after the morrow, stating in the hon-
est way he knew so well that she had heard
99
THE WELL-BELOVED
he was out of town or she would have asked
him two or three weeks ago. Now, of all so-
cial things that Pierston liked it was to be
asked to dinner offhand, as a stop-gap in place
of some bishop, lord, or under-secretary who
couldn't come ; and when the invitation was
supplemented by the tidings that the lady
who had so impressed him was to be one of
the guests, he had promised instantly.
At the dinner he took down Mrs. Pine-Avon
upon his arm, and talked to nobody else dur-
ing the meal. Afterwards they kept apart
awhile in the drawing-room for form's sake,
but eventually gravitated together again, and
finished the evening in each other's company.
When, shortly after eleven, he came away he
felt almost certain that within those luminous
gray eyes the One of his eternal fidelity had
verily taken lodgings — and for a long lease.
But this was not all. At parting he had, al-
most involuntarily, given her hand a pressure
of a peculiar and indescribable kind ; a little
response from her, like a mere pulsation of the
same sort, told him that the impression she had
made upon him was reciprocated. She was, in
a word, willing to go on.
But was he able ?
IOO
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
There had not been much harm in the flirta-
tion thus far ; but did she know his history,
the curse upon his nature ? — that he was the
Wandering Jew of the love-world ; how rest-
lessly ideal his fancies were ; how the artist
in him had consumed the wooer; how he was
in constant dread lest he should wrong some
woman twice as good as himself by seeming
to mean what he fain would mean but could
not ; how useless he was likely to be for prac-
tical steps towards householding, though he
was all the while pining for domestic life ? He
was now over forty, she was probably thirty ;
and he dared not make unmeaning love with
the careless selfishness of a younger man. It
was unfair to go further without telling her,
even though hitherto such explicitness had
not been absolutely demanded.
He determined to call immediately on the
New Incarnation.
She lived not far from the long-fashionable
Hamptonshire Square, and he went hither with
expectations of having a highly emotional
time, at least. But somehow the very bell-
pull seemed cold, although she had so ear-
nestly asked him to come.
As the house spoke, so spoke the occupant,
IOI
THE WELL-BELOVED
much to the astonishment of the sculptor.
The doors he passed through seemed as if
they had not been opened for a month ; and,
entering the large drawing-room, he beheld,
in an easy -chair in the far distance, a lady
whom he journeyed across the carpet to reach,
and ultimately did reach. To be sure, it was
Mrs. Nichola Pine-Avon, but frosted over in-
describably. Raising her eyes in a slightly
inquiring manner from the book she was read-
ing, she leaned back in the chair, as if soaking
herself in luxurious sensations which had noth-
ing to do with him, and replied to his greet-
ing with a few commonplace words.
The unfortunate Jocelyn, though recupera-
tive to a degree, was at first terribly upset by
this reception. He had distinctly begun to
love Nichola, and he felt sick and almost re-
sentful. But happily his affection was incip-
ient as yet. and a sudden sense of the ridicu-
lous in his own position carried him to the
verge of risibility during the scene. She sig-
nified a chair, and began the critical study of
some rings she wore.
They talked over the day's news, and then
an organ began to grind outside. The tune
was a rollicking air he had heard at some
102
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
music-hall ; and, by way of a diversion, he
asked her if she knew the composition.
" No, I don't," she replied.
" Now, I'll tell you all about it," said he,
gravely. " It is based on a sound old melo-
dy called 'The Jilt's Hornpipe.' Just as they
turn Madeira into port in the space of a single
night, so this old air has been taken and doc-
tored and twisted about and brought out as
a new popular ditty."
" Indeed!"
" If you are in the habit of going much to
the music-halls or the burlesque theatres — "
"Yes?"
"You would find this is often done, with
excellent effect."
vShe thawed a little, and then they went on
to talk about her house, which had been new-
ly painted, and decorated with greenish -blue
satin up to the height of a person's head —
an arrangement that somewhat improved her
slightly faded, though still pretty, face, and
was helped by the awnings over the windows.
" Yes ; I have had my house some years,"
she observed, complacently, " and I like it
better every year."
"Don't you feel lonely in it sometimes?"
H 103
THE WELL-BELOVED
"Oh, never!"
However, before he rose she grew friendly
to some degree, and when he left, just after
the arrival of three opportune young ladies,
she seemed regretful. She asked him to come
again ; and he thought he would tell the truth.
"No; I shall not care to come again," he an-
swered, in a tone inaudible to the young
ladies.
She followed him to the door. "What an
uncivil thing to say!" she murmured, in sur-
prise.
"It is rather uncivil. Good-bye," said
Pierston.
As a punishment she did not ring the bell,
but left him to find his way out as he could.
" Now what the devil this means I cannot tell,"
he said to himself, reflecting stock-still for a
moment on the stairs. And yet the meaning
was staring him in the face.
Meanwhile one of the three young ladies
had said, " What interesting man was that,
with his lovely head of hair? I saw him at
Lady Channelcliffe's the other night."
"Jocelyn Pierston."
" Oh, Nichola, that is too bad ! To let him
go in that shabby way, when I would have
104
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
given anything to know him ! I have wanted
to know him ever since I found out how much
his experiences had dictated his statuary, and
I discovered them by seeing in a Jersey paper
notice of the marriage of a person supposed to
be his wife, who ran off with him many years
ago, don't you know, and then wouldn't marry
him, in obedience to some novel social prin-
ciples she had invented for herself."
"Oh! didn't he marry her?" said Mrs. Pine-
Avon, with a start. "Why, I heard only yes-
terday that he did, though they have lived
apart ever since."
" Quite a mistake," said the young lady.
" How I wish I could run after him !"
But Jocelyn was receding from the pretty
widow's house with long strides. He went
out very little during the next few days, but
about a week later he kept an engagement to
dine with Lady Iris Speedwell, whom he nev-
er neglected, because she was the brightest
hostess in London.
By some accident he arrived rather early.
Lady Iris had left the drawing-room for a mo-
ment to see that all was ri^ht in the dining-
room, and when he was shown in, there stood
alone in the lamplight Nichola Pine-Avon.
105
THE WELL-BELOVED
She had been the first arrival. He had not in
the least expected to meet her there, further
than that, in a general sense, at Lady Iris's
you expected to meet everybody.
She had just come out of the,, cloak-room,
and was so tender and even apologetic that he
had not the heart to be other than friendly.
As the other guests dropped in, the pair re-
treated into a shady corner, and she talked
beside him till all moved off for the eating and
drinking.
He had not been appointed to take her
across to the dining-room, but at the table
found her exactly opposite. She looked very
charming between the candles, and then sud-
denly it dawned upon him that her previous
manner must have originated in some false
report about Marcia, of whose existence he
had not heard for years. Anyhow, he was
not disposed to resent an inexplicability in
womankind, having found that it usually arose
independently of fact, reason, probability, or
his own deserts.
So he dined on, catching her eyes and the
few pretty words she made opportunity to
project across the table to him now and then.
He was courteously responsive only, but Mrs.
1 06
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
Pine-Avon herself distinctly made advaffces.
He readmired her, while at the same time her
conduct in her own house had been enough
to check his confidence — enough even to make
him doubt if the Well-Beloved really resided
within those contours, or had ever been more
than the most transitory passenger through
that interesting and accomplished soul.
He was pondering this question, yet growing
decidedly moved by the playful pathos of her
attitude, when, by chance searching his pocket
for his handkerchief, something crackled, and
he felt there an unopened letter, which had
arrived at the moment he was leaving his
house and he had slipped into his coat to read
in the cab as he drove along. Pierston drew it
sufficiently forth to observe by the post-mark
that it came from his natal isle. Having hardly
a correspondent in that part of the world, now
he began to conjecture on the possible sender.
The lady on his right, whom he had brought
in, was a leading actress of the town — indeed,
of the United Kingdom and America, for that
matter — a creature in airy clothing, trans-
lucent, like a balsam or sea-anemone, without
shadows, and in movement as responsive as
some highly lubricated, many-wired machine
107
THE WELL-BELOVED
which, if one presses a particular spring, flies
open and reveals its works. The spring in the
present case was the artistic commendation
she deserved. At this particular moment she
was engaged with the man on her right, a rep-
resentative of Family, who talked positively
and hollowly, as if shouting down a vista of
five hundred years from the feudal past. The
lady on Jocelyn's left, wife of a Lord Justice of
Appeal, was in like manner talking to her com-
panion on the outer side ; so that for the time
he was left to himself. He took advantage of
the opportunity, drew out his letter, and read
it as it lay upon his napkin, nobody observing
him, so far as he was aware.
It came from the wife of one of his father's
former workmen, and was concerning her son,
whom she begged Jocelyn to recommend as
candidate for some post in town that she
wished him to fill. But the end of the letter
was what arrested him :
" You will be sorry to hear, sir, that dear little Avice
Caro, as we used to call her in her maiden days, is
dead. She married her cousin, if you do mind, and
went away from here for a good few years, but was
left a widow, and came back a twelvemonth ago; since
when she faltered and faltered, and now she is gone."
108
Ill
SHE BECOMES AN INACCESSIBLE GHOST
By imperceptible and slow degrees the scene
at the dinner -table receded into the back-
ground, behind the vivid presentment of Avice
Caro and the old, old scenes on Isle Vindilia
which were inseparable from her personality.
The dining-room was real no more, dissolving
under the bold, stony promontory and the in-
coming West Sea. The handsome marchioness
in geranium-red and diamonds, who was visible
to him on his host's right hand opposite, be-
came one of the glowing vermilion sunsets
that he had watched so many times over
Deadman's Bay, with the form of Avice in the
foreground. Between his eyes and the judge
who sat next to Nichola, with a chin so raw
that he must have shaved every quarter of
an hour during the day, intruded the face of
Avice as she had glanced at him in their last
parting. The crannied features of the old so-
109
THE WELL-BELOVED
ciety lady, who, if she had been a few years
older, would have been as old-fashioned as her
daughter, shaped themselves to the dusty
quarries of his and Avice's parents, down
which he had clambered with Avice hundreds
of times. The ivy trailing about the table-
cloth, the lights in the tall candlesticks, and
the bunches of flowers were transmuted into
the ivies of the cliff-built castle, the tufts of
seaweed, and the lighthouses on the isle. The
salt airs of the ocean killed the smell of the
viands, and instead of the clatter of voices
came the monologue of the tide off the Beal.
More than all, Nichola Pine-Avon lost the
blooming radiance which she had latterly ac-
quired ; she became a woman of his acquaint-
ance with no distinctive traits; she seemed to
grow material, a superficies of flesh and bone
merely, a person of lines and surfaces ; she was
a language in living cipher no more.
When the ladies had withdrawn it was just
the same. The soul of Avice — the only woman
he had never lovecTof those who had loved him
— surrounded him like a firmament. Art drew
near to him in the person of one of the most
distinguished of portrait - painters ; but there
was only one painter for Jocelyn — his own
no
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
memory. All that was eminent in European
surgery addressed him in the person of that
harmless and unassuming fogy whose hands
had been inside the bodies of hundreds of
living men; but the lily-white corpse of an
obscure country-girl chilled the interest of dis-
course with such a king of operators.
Reaching the drawing-room, he talked to
his hostess. Though she had entertained
twenty guests at her table that night she had
known not only what every one of them was
saying and doing throughout the repast, but
what every one was thinking. So, being an
old friend, she said, quietly, " What has been
troubling you? Something has, I know. I
have been travelling over your face and have
seen it there."
Nothing coujd less express the meaning his
recent news had for him than a statement of
its facts. He told of the opening of the letter
and the discovery of the death of an old ac-
quaintance.
" The only woman whom I never valued, I
may almost say," he added ; " and therefore
the only one I shall ever regret."
Whether she considered it a sufficient ex-
planation or not, the woman of experiences
in
THE WELL-BELOVED
accepted it as such. She was the single lady
of his circle whom nothing erratic in his
doings could surprise, and he often gave her
stray ends of his confidence thus with perfect
safety.
He did not go near Mrs. Pine- Avon again ;
he could not ; and on leaving the house
walked abstractedly along the streets till he
found himself at his own door. In his own
room he sat down, and, placing his hands be-
hind his head, thought his thoughts anew.
At one side of the room stood an escritoire,
and from a lower drawer therein he took out
a small box tightly nailed down. He forced
the cover with the poker. The box contained
a variety of odds and ends, which Pierston
had thrown into it from time to time in past
years for future sorting — an intention that he
had never carried out. From the melancholy
mass of papers — faded photographs, seals, di-
aries, withered flowers, and such like — Joce-
lyn drew a little portrait, one taken on glass
in the primitive days of photography, and
framed with tinsel in the commonest way.
It was Avice Caro, as she had appeared
during the summer month or two which he
had spent with her on the island twenty years
112
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
before this time, her young lips pursed up, he|
hands meekly folded. The effect of the glasi
was to lend to the picture much of the soft-
ness characteristic of the original. He re-
membered when it was taken — during one
afternoon they had spent together at a neigh-
boring watering-place, when he had suggested
her sitting to a touring artist on the sands,
there being nothing else for them to do. A
long contemplation of the likeness completed
in his emotions what the letter had begun.
He loved the woman dead and inaccessible
as he had never loved her in life. He had
thought of her but at distant intervals during
the twenty years since that parting occurred,
and only as somebody he could have wed-
ded. Yet now the times of youthful friend-
ship with her, in which he had learned every
note of her innocent nature, flamed up into
a yearning and passionate attachment, embit-
tered by regret beyond words.
That kiss which had offended his dignity,
which she had so childishly given him before
her consciousness of womanhood had been
awakened, what he would have offered to
have a quarter of it now !
Pierston was almost angry with himself for
h 113
THE WELL-BELOVED
his feelings of this night, so unreasonably,
motivelessly strong were they towards the
lost young playmate. " How senseless of me!"
he said, as he lay in his lonely bed. She had
been another man's wife almost the whole
time since he was estranged from her, and
now she was a corpse. Yet the absurdity did
not make his grief the less ; and the con-
sciousness of the intrinsic, almost radiant,
purity of this new-sprung affection for a flown
spirit forbade him to check it. The flesh was
absent altogether ; it was love rarefied and re-
fined to its highest attar. He had felt nothing
like it before.
The next afternoon he went down to the
club ; not his large club, where the men hard-
ly spoke to each other, but the homely one,
where they told stories of an afternoon, and
were not ashamed to confess among them-
selves to personal weaknesses and follies,
knowing well that such secrets would go no
farther. But he could not tell this. So
volatile and intangible was the story that to
convey it in words would have been as hard
as to cage a perfume.
They observed his altered manner and said
he was in love. Pierston admitted that he
114
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
was; and there it ended. When he reached
home he looked out of his bedroom window,
and began to consider in what direction from
where he stood that darling little figure lay.
It was straight across there, under the young
pale moon. The symbol signified well. The
divinity of the silver bow was not more ex-
cellently pure than she, the lost, had been.
Under that moon was the island of Ancient
Slingers, and on the island a house, framed
from mullions to chimney-top like the isle
itself, of stone. Inside the window, the moon-
light irradiating her winding-sheet, lay Avice,
reached only by the faint noises inherent in
the isle ; the tink-tink of the chisels in the
quarries, the surging of the tides in the bay,
and the muffled grumbling of the currents in
the never-pacified race.
He began to divine the truth. Avice, the
departed one, though she had come short of
inspiring a passion, had yet possessed a ground-
quality absent from her rivals, without which
it seemed that a fixed and full-rounded con-
stancy to a woman could not flourish in him.
Like his own, her family had been islanders for
centuries — from Norman, Anglian, Roman,
Balearic-British limes. Hence, in her nature,
"5
THE WELL-BELOVED
as in his, was some mysterious ingredient
sucked from the isle ; otherwise a racial in-
stinct necessary to the absolute unison of a pair.
Thus, though he might never love a woman of
the island race, for lack in her of the desired
refinement, he could not love long a kimberlin
— a woman other than of the island race, for
her lack of this groundwork of character.
Such was Pierston's view of things. Another
fancy of his, an artist's superstition merely,
may be mentioned. The Caros, like some oth-
er local families, suggested a Roman lineage,
more or less grafted on the stock of the Sling-
ers. Their features recalled those of the Italian
peasantry to any one as familiar as he was with
them ; and there were evidences that the Ro-
man colonists had been populous and long-
abiding in and near this corner of Britain.
Tradition urged that a temple to Venus once
stood at the top of the Roman road leading up
into the isle ; and possibly one to the love-
goddess of the Slingers antedated this. What
so natural as that the true star of his soul
would be found nowhere but in one of the old
island breed ?
After dinner his old friend Somers came in
to smoke, and when they had talked a little
116
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
while Somers alluded casually to some place at
which they would meet on the morrow.
" I sha'n't be there," said Pierston.
" But you promised !"
" Yes. But I shall be at the island — looking
at a dead woman's grave." As he spoke his
eyes turned and remained fixed on a table
near. Somers followed the direction of his
glance to a photograph on a stand.
" Is that she ?" he asked.
"Yes."
" Rather a bygone affair, then."
Pierston acknowledged it. " She's the only
sweetheart I ever slighted, Alfred," he said.
" Because she's the only one I ought to have
cared for. That's just the fool I have always
been."
" But if she's dead and buried you can go to
her grave at any time as well as now to keep
up the sentiment."
" I don't know that she's buried."
" But to-morrow — the Academy night ! Of
all days, why go then?"
" I don't care about the Academy."
" Pierston — you are our only inspired sculp-
tor. You are our Praxiteles, or rather our
Lysippus. You are almost the only man of
117
THE WELL-BELOVED
this generation who has been able to mould
and chisel forms living enough to draw the
idle public away from the popular paintings
into the usually deserted lecture- room; and
people who have seen your last pieces of stuff
say there has been nothing like them since
sixteen hundred and — since the sculptors ' of
the great race ' lived and died, whenever that
was. Well, then, for the sake of others you
ought not to rush off to that God-forgotten
sea-rock just when you are wanted in town, all
for a woman you last saw a hundred years
ago."
" No — it was only nineteen and three quar-
ters," replied his friend, with abstracted literal-
ness. He went the next morning.
Since the days of his youth a railway had
been constructed along the pebble bank, so
that, except when the rails were washed away
by the tides, which was rather often, the pen-
insula was quickly accessible. At two o'clock
in the afternoon he was rattled along by this
new means of locomotion, under the familiar
monotonous line of bran-colored stones, and he
soon emerged from the station, standing as a
strange exotic among the black lerrets, the
ruins of the washed-away village, and the white
118
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
cubes of oolite, just come to view after burial
through unreckonable geologic years.
In entering upon the pebble beach the train
had passed close to the ruins of Henry the
Eighth's or Sandsfoot Castle, whither Avice
was to have accompanied him on the night of
his departure. Had she appeared the primi-
tive betrothal would probably have taken
place ; and, as no islander had ever been known
to break that compact, she would have become
his wife.
Ascending the steep incline to where the
quarrymen were chipping, just as they had
formerly done, and within sound of the great
stone saws, he looked southward towards the
Beal.
The level line of the sea horizon rose above
the surface of the isle, a ruffled patch in mid-
distance as usual marking the race, whence
many a Lycidas had gone
" Visiting the bottom of the monstrous world,"
but had not been blessed with a poet as a
friend. Against the stretch of water, where a
school of mackerel twinkled in the afternoon
light, was defined, in addition to the distant
lighthouse, a church with its tower, standing
i [ig
THE WELL-BELOVED
about a quarter of a mile off, near the edge of
the cliff. The church-yard gravestones could
be seen in profile against the same vast spread
of watery babble and unrest.
Among the graves moved the form of a man
clothed in a white sheet, which the wind blew
and flapped sadly every now and then. Near
him moved six men bearing a long box, and
two or three persons in black followed. The
cofnn, with its twelve legs, crawled across the
isle, while around and beneath it the flashing
lights from the sea and the school of mackerel
were reflected ; a fishing-boat, far out in the
Channel, being momentarily discernible under
the coffin also.
The procession wandered round to a partic-
ular corner and halted, and paused there a
long while in the wind, the sea behind them,
the surplice of the priest still blowing. Joce-
lyn stood with his hat off: he was present,
though he was a quarter of a mile off ; and he
seemed to hear the words that were being
said, though nothing but the wind was au-
dible.
He instinctively knew that it was none other
than Avice whom he was seeing interred ; his
Avice, as he now began presumptuously to call
120
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
her. Presently the little group withdrew from
before the sea-shine and disappeared.
He felt himself unable to go farther in that
direction, and turning aside went aimlessly
across the open land, visiting the various spots
that he had formerly visited with her. But, as
if tethered to the church-yard by a cord, he
was still conscious of being at the end of a
radius whose pivot was the grave of Avice
Caro; and as the dusk thickened he closed
upon his centre and entered the church-yard
gate.
Not a soul was now within the precincts.
The grave, newly shaped, was easily discover-
able behind the church, and when the same
young moon arose which he had observed the
previous evening from his window in London
he could see the yet fresh foot-marks of the
mourners and bearers. The breeze had fallen
to a calm with the setting of the sun: the light-
house had opened its glaring eye, and, disin-
clined to leave a spot sublimed both by early
association and present regret, he moved back
to the church-wall, warm from the afternoon
sun, and sat down upon a window-sill facing
the grave.
121
IV
SHE THREATENS TO RESUME CORPOREAL SUBSTANCE
The lispings of the sea beneath the cliffs
were all the sounds that reached him, for the
quarries were silent now. How long he sat
here lonely and thinking he did not know.
Neither did he know, though he felt drowsy,
whether inexpectant sadness — that gentle sop-
orific— lulled him into a short sleep, so that
he lost count of time and consciousness of in-
cident. But during some minute or minutes he
seemed to see Avice Caro herself bending over
and then withdrawing from her grave in the
light of the moon.
She seemed not a year older, not a digit less
slender, not a line more angular, than when he
had parted from her twenty years earlier in
the lane hard by. A renascent reasoning on
the impossibility of such a phenomenon as
this being more than a dream -fancy roused
him with a start from his heaviness.
J23
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
" I must have been asleep," he said.
Yet she had seemed so real. Pierston, how-
ever, dismissed the strange impression, arguing
that even if the information sent him of Avice's
death should be false — a thing incredible —
that sweet friend of his youth, despite the
transfiguring effects of moonlight, would not
now look the same as she had appeared nine-
teen or twenty years ago. Were what he saw
substantial flesh, it must have been some other
person than Avice Caro.
Having satisfied his sentiment by coming to
the graveside, there was nothing more for him
to do in the island, and he decided to return
to London that night. But, some time remain-
ing still on his hands, Jocelyn by a natural in-
stinct turned his feet in the direction of East
Quarriers, the village of his birth and of hers.
Passing the market-square, he pursued the arm
of road to Sylvania Castle, a private man-
sion of comparatively modern date, in whose
grounds stood the single plantation of trees of
which the isle could boast. The cottages ex-
tended close to the walls of the enclosure, and
one of the last of these dwellings had been
Avice's, in which, as it was her freehold, she
possibly had died.
123
THE WELL-BELOVED
To reach it he passed the gates of Sylva-
nia, and observed above the lawn wall a board
announcing that the house was to be let fur-
nished. A few steps farther revealed the cot-
tage which, with its quaint and massive stone
features of two or three centuries' antiquity,
was capable even now of longer resistance to
the rasp of time than ordinary new erections.
His attention was drawn to the window, still
unblinded, though a lamp lit the room. He
stepped back against the wall opposite and
gazed in.
At a table covered with a white cloth a young
woman stood putting tea-things away into a
corner cupboard. She was in all respects the
Avice he had lost, the girl he had seen in the
church-yard and had fancied to be the illusion
of a dream. And though there was this time
no doubt about her reality, the isolation of her
position in the silent house lent her a curiously
startling aspect. Divining the explanation, he
waited for footsteps, and in a few moments a
quarryman passed him on his journey home.
Pierston inquired of the man concerning the
spectacle.
" Oh yes, sir; that's poor Mrs. Caro's only
daughter, and it must be lonely for her there
124
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
to-night, poor maid ! Yes, good-now ; she's the
very daps of her mother — that's what every-
body says."
" But how does she come to be so lonely?"
" One of her brothers went to sea and was
drowned, and t'other is in America."
" They were quarry-owners at one time ?"
The quarryman ''pitched his knitch," and ex-
plained to the seeming stranger that there had
been three families thereabouts in the stone
trade, who had got much involved with each
other in the last generation. They were the
Bencombs, the Pierstons, and the Caros. The
Bencombs strained their utmost to outlift the
other two, and partially succeeded. They grew
enormously rich, sold out, and disappeared al-
together from the island which had been their
making. The Pierstons kept a dogged middle
course, throve without show or noise, and also
retired in their turn. The Caros were pulled
completely down in the competition with the
other two, and when Widow Caro's daughter
married her cousin Jim Caro, he tried to regain
for the family its original place in the three-
cornered struggle. He took contracts at less
than he could profit by, speculated more and
more, till at last the crash came ; he was sold
125
THE WELL-BELOVED
up, went away, and later on came back to live
in this little cottage, which was his wife's by in-
heritance. There he remained till his death ;
and now his widow was gone. Hardships had
helped on her end.
The quarryman proceeded on his way, and
Pierston, deeply remorseful, knocked at the
door of the minute freehold. The girl herself
opened it, lamp in hand.
" Avice !" he said, tenderly ; " Avice Caro !"
even now unable to get over the strange feel-
ing that he was twenty years younger, ad-
dressing Avice the forsaken.
"Ann, sir," said she.
" Ah, your name is not the same as your
mother's!"
" My second name is. And my surname.
Poor mother married her cousin."
" As everybody does here. . . . Well, Ann
or otherwise, you are Avice to me. And you
have lost her now ?"
" I have, sir."
She spoke in the very same sweet voice that
he had listened to a score of years before, and
bent eyes of the same familiar hazel inquiring-
ly upon him.
" I knew your mother at one time," he said:
126
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
" and, learning of her death and burial, I took
the liberty of calling upon you. You will for-
give a stranger doing that?"
" Yes," she said, dispassionately; and, glanc-
ing round the room : " This was mother's own
house, and now it is mine. I am sorry not to
be in mourning on the night of her funeral,
but I have just been to put some flowers on
her grave, and I took it off afore going, that
the damp mid not spoil the crape. You see,
she was bad a long time, and I have to be
careful, and do washing and ironing for a liv-
ing. She hurt her side with wringing up the
large sheets she had to wash for the Castle
folks here."
" I hope you won't hurt yourself doing it,
my dear."
" Oh no, that I sha'n't! There's Charl Wool-
lat, and Sammy Scribben, and Ted Gibsey, and
lots o' young chaps ; they'll wring anything
for mc if they happen to come along. But I
can hardly trust 'em. Sam Scribben t'other
day twisted a linen table-cloth into two pieces,
for all the world as if it had been a pipe-light.
They never know when to stop in their
wringing/1
The voice truly was his Avice's ; but
127
THE WELL-BELOVED
Avice the Second was clearly more matter-
of-fact, unreflecting, less cultivated than her
mother had been. This Avice would never
recite poetry from any platform, local or
other, with enthusiastic appreciation of its fire.
There was a disappointment in his recognition
of this ; yet she touched him as few had done ;
he could not bear to go away. " How old are
you ?" he asked.
" Going in nineteen."
It was about the age of her double, Avice
the First, when he and she had strolled to-
gether over the cliffs during the engagement.
But he was now forty, if a day. She before
him was an uneducated laundress, and he was
a sculptor and a Royal Academician, with a
fortune and a reputation. Yet why was it an
unpleasant sensation to him just then to recol-
lect that he was two-score?
He could find no further excuse for remain-
ing, and, having still half an hour to spare, he
went round by the road to the other or west
side of the last-century Sylvania Castle, and
came to the farthest house out there on the
cliff. It was his early home. Used in the
summer as a lodging-house for visitors, it now
stood empty and silent, the evening wind
128
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
swaying the euonymus and tamarisk boughs
in the front — the only evergreen shrubs that
could weather the whipping salt gales which
sped past the walls. Opposite the house, far
out at sea, the familiar light-ship winked from
the sand-bank, and all at once there came to
him a wild wish — that, instead of having an
artist's reputation, he could be living here an
illiterate and unknown man, wooing, and in a
fair way of winning, the pretty laundress in
the cottage hard by.
THE RESUMPTION TAKES PLACE
HAVING returned to London, he mechani-
cally resumed his customary life ; but he was
not really living there. The phantom of
Avice, now grown to be warm flesh and
blood, held his mind afar. He thought of
nothing but the isle, and Avice the Second
dwelling therein — inhaling its salt breath,
stroked by its singing rains and by the
haunted atmosphere of Roman Venus about
and around the site of her perished temple
there. The very defects in the country girl
became charms as viewed from town.
Nothing now pleased him so much as to
spend that portion of the afternoon which he
devoted to outdoor exercise in haunting the
purlieus of the wharves along the Thames,
where the stone of his native rock was un-
shipped from the coasting - craft that had
brought it thither. He would pass inside
130
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
the great gates of these landing-places on the
right or left bank, contemplate the white cubes
and oblongs, imbibe their associations, call up
the genius loci whence they came, and almost
forget that he was in London.
One afternoon he was walking away from
the mud -splashed entrance to one of the
wharves, when his attention was drawn to a
female form on the opposite side of the way,
going towards the spot he had just left. She
was somewhat small, slight, and graceful ; her
attire alone would have been enough to at-
tract him, being simple and countrified to
picturesqueness ; but he was more than at-
tracted by her strong resemblance to Avice
Caro the younger — Ann Avice, as she had
said she was called.
Before she had receded a hundred yards he
felt certain that it was Avice, indeed ; and his
unifying mood of the afternoon was now so
intense that the lost and the found Avice
seemed essentially the same person. Their
external likeness to each other — probably
owing to the cousinship between the elder
and her husband — went far to nourish the
fantasy. lie hastily turned, and rediscovered
the girl among the pedestrians. She kept on
131
THE WELL-BELOVED
her way to the wharf, where, looking inquir-
ingly around her for a few seconds, with the
manner of one unaccustomed to the locality,
she opened the gate and disappeared.
Pierston also went up to the gate and en-
tered. She had crossed to the landing-place,
beyond which a lumpy craft lay moored. iDraw-
ing nearer, he discovered her to be engaged in
conversation with the skipper and an elderly
woman — both come straight from the oolitic
isle, as was apparent in a moment from their
accent. Pierston felt no hesitation in making
himself known as a native, the ruptured en-
gagement between Avice's mother and him-
self twenty years before having been known
to few or none now living.
The present embodiment of Avice recog-
nized him, and with the artless candor of her
race and years explained the situation, though
that was rather his duty as an intruder than
hers.
" This is Cap'n Kibbs, sir, a distant relation
of father's," she said. "And this is Mrs.
Kibbs. We've come up from the island
wi'en just for a trip, and are going to sail
back wi'en Wednesday."
" Oh, I see. And where arg you staying ?"
132
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
" Here — on board."
" What — you live on board entirely ?"
"Yes."
" Lord, sir," broke in Mrs. Kibbs, " I should
be afeard o' my life to tine my eyes among
these here kimberlins at night-time ; and even
by day, if so be I venture into the streets, I
nowhen forget how many turnings to the
right and to the left 'tis to get back to Job's
vessel — do I, Job?"
The skipper nodded confirmation.
"You are safer ashore than afloat," said
Pierston," especially in the Channel, with these
winds and those heavy blocks of stone."
" Well," said Cap'n Kibbs, after privately
clearing something from his mouth, "as to
the winds, there idden much danger in them
at this time o' year. 'lis the ocean-bound
steamers that make the risk to craft like ours.
If you happen to be in their course, under
you go — cut clane in two pieces, and they
never lying to to haul in your carcasses, and
nobody to tell the tale."
Pierston turned to Avice, wanting to say
much to her, yet not knowing what to say.
He lamely remarked at last, " You go back
the same way, Avice ?"
133
THE WELL-BELOVED
"Yes, sin"
" Well, take care of yourself afloat."
" Oh yes."
" I hope — I may see you again soon — and
talk to you."
" I hope so, sir."
He could not get further, and after a while
Pierston left them, and went away thinking of
Avice more than ever.
The next day he mentally timed them
down the river, allowing for the pause to take
in ballast, and on the Wednesday pictured
the sail down the open sea. That night he
thought of the little craft under the bows
of the huge steam-vessels, powerless to make
itself seen or heard, and Avice, now growing
inexpressibly dear, sleeping in her little berth
at the mercy of a thousand chance catastrophes.
Honest perception had told him that this
Avice, fairer than her mother in face and
form, was her inferior in soul and understand-
ing. Yet the fervor which the first could
never kindle in him was, almost to his alarm,
burning up now. He began to have misgiv-
ings as to some queer trick that his migratory
Beloved was about to play him, or rather the
capricious divinity behind that ideal lady.
134
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
A gigantic satire upon the mutations of his
nymph during the past twenty years seemed
looming in the distance. A forsaking of the
accomplished and well-connected Mrs. Pine-
Avon for the little laundress, under the trac-
tion of some mystic magnet which had noth-
ing to do with reason — surely that was the
form of the satire.
But it was recklessly pleasant to leave the
suspicion unrecognized as yet and follow the
lead.
In thinking how best to do this Pierston
recollected that, as was customary when the
summer-time approached, Sylvania Castle had
been advertised for letting furnished. A soli-
tary dreamer like himself, whose wants all lay
in an artistic and ideal direction, did not re-
quire such gaunt accommodation as the afore-
said residence offered ; but the spot was all,
and the expenses of a few months of tenancy
therein he could well afford. A letter to the
agent was despatched that night, and in a few
days Jocelyn found himself -the temporary
possessor of a place which, he had never seen
the inside of since his childhood, and had then
deemed the abode of unpleasant ghosts.
k 135
./
VI
THE PAST SHINES IN THE PRESENT
It was the evening of Pierston's arrival at
Sylvania Castle, an ordinary manor-house on
the brink of the cliffs ; and he had walked
through the rooms, about the lawn, and into
the surrounding plantation of elms, which on
this island of treeless rock lent a unique char-
acter to the enclosure. In name, nature, and
accessories the property within the girdling
wall formed a complete antithesis to every-
thing in its precincts. To find other trees
between Pebble-bank and Beal it was neces-
sary to recede a little in time — to dig down to
a loose stratum of the underlying stone-beds,
where a forest of conifers lay as petrifactions,
their heads all in one direction, as blown down
by a gale in the Secondary geologic epoch.
Dusk had closed in, and he now proceeded
with what was, after all, the real business of
his sojourn. The two servants who had been
136
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
left to take care of the house were in their
own quarters, and he went out unobserved.
Crossing a hollow overhung by the budding
boughs, he approached an empty garden-house
of Elizabethan design, which stood on the
outer wall of the grounds, and commanded
by a window the fronts of the nearest cot-
tages. Among them was the home of the
resuscitated Avice.
He had chosen this moment for his outlook
through knowing that the villagers were in no
hurry to pull down their blinds at nightfall.
And, as he had divined, the inside of the
young woman's living-room was visible to him
as formerly, illuminated by the rays of its
own lamp.
A subdued thumping came every now and
then from the apartment. She was ironing
linen on a flannel table-cloth, a row of such
apparel hanging on a clothes-horse by the fire.
Her face had been pale when he encountered
her, but now it was warm and pink with her
exertions and the heat of the stove. Yet it
l in perfect and passionless repose, which
imparted a Minerva cast to the profile. When
she glanced up, her lineaments seemed to have
all the soul and heart that had characterized
U7
THE WELL-BELOVED
her mother's, and had been with her a true
index of the spirit within. Could it be pos-
sible that in this case the manifestation was
fictitious? He had met with many such ex-
amples of hereditary persistence without the
qualities signified by the traits. He uncon-
sciously hoped that it was at least not entirely
so here.
The room was less furnished than when he
had last beheld it. The " bo-fet," or double
corner cupboard, where the china was formerly
kept, had disappeared, its place being taken
by a plain board. The tall old clock, with its
ancient oak carcass, arched brow, and humor-
ous mouth, was also not to be seen, a cheap
white-dialled specimen doing its work. What
these displacements might betoken saddened
his humanity less than it cheered his primitive
instinct in pointing out how her necessities
might bring them together.
Having fixed his residence near her for some
lengthy time, he felt in no hurry to obtrude
his presence just now, and went indoors. That
this girl's frame was doomed to be a real em-
bodiment of that olden seductive one — that
protean dream-creature, who had never seen
fit to irradiate the mother's image till it be-
138
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
came a mere memory after dissolution — he
doubted less every moment.
There was an uneasiness in recognizing such.
There was something abnormal in his present
proclivity. A certain sanity had, after all, ac-
companied his former idealizing passions ; the
Beloved had seldom informed a personality
which, while enrapturing his soul, simultane-
ously shocked his intellect. A change, per-
haps, had come.
It was a fine morning on the morrow.
Walking in the grounds towards the gate, he
saw Avice entering his hired castle with a
broad oval wicker-basket covered with a white
cloth, which burden she bore round to the
back door. Of course, she washed for his own
household ; he had not thought of that. In
the morning sunlight she appeared rather as a
sylph than as a washerwoman ; and he could
not but think that the slightness of her figure
was as ill adapted to this occupation as her
mother's had been.
But, after all, it was not the washerwoman
that he saw now. In front of her, on the sur-
face of her, was shining out that more real,
more interpenetrating being whom he knew
so well ! The occupation of the subserving
139 ■
THE WELL-BELOVED
minion, the blemishes of the temporary creat-
ure who formed the background, were of the
same account in the presentation of the indis-
pensable one as the supporting posts and
framework in a pyrotechnic display.
She left the house and went homeward by a
path of which he was not aware, having prob-
ably changed her course because she had seen
him standing there. It meant nothing, for she
had hardly become acquainted with him ; yet
that she should have avoided him was a new
experience. He had no opportunity for a fur-
ther study of her by distant observation, and
hit upon a pretext for bringing her face to face
with him. He found fault with his linen, and
directed that the laundress should be sent for.
" She is rather young, poor little thing," said
the housemaid, apologetically. " But since her
mother's death she has enough to do to keep
above water, and we make shift with her. But
I'll tell her, sir."
" I will see her myself. Send her in when
she comes," said Pierston.
One morning, accordingly, when he was
answering a spiteful criticism of a late work of
his, he was told that she waited his pleasure
in the hall. He went out.
* 140
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
"About the washing," said the sculptor,
stiffly. " I am a very particular person, and I
wish no preparation of lime to be used."
" I didn't know folks used it," replied the
maiden, in a scared and reserved tone, without
looking at him.
" That's all right. And then, the mangling
smashes the buttons."
" I haven't got a mangle, sir," she murmured.
"Ah, that's satisfactory. And I object to
so much borax in the starch."
" I don't put any," Avice returned in the
same close way ; " never heard the name o't
afore !"
"Oh, I see!"
All this time Pierston was thinking of the
girl — or, as the scientific might say, Nature
was working her plans for the next generation
under the cloak of a dialogue on linen. He
could not read her individual character, owing
to the confusing effect of her likeness to a
woman whom he had valued too late. He
could not help seeing in her all that he knew
of another, and veiling in her all that did not
harmonize with his sense of metempsychosis.
The girl seemed to think of nothing but the
business in hand. She had answered to the
141
THE WELL-BELOVED
point, and was hardly aware of his sex or of
his shape.
" I knew your mother, Avice," he said.
" You remember my telling you so ?"
" Yes."
" Well — I have taken this house for two
or three months, and you will be very use-
ful to me. You still live just outside the
wall?"
" Yes, sir," said the self-contained girl.
Demurely and dispassionately she turned to
leave — this pretty creature with features so
still. There was something strange in seeing
move off thus that form which he knew pass-
ing well, she who was once so throbbingly
alive to his presence that, not many yards
from this spot, she had flung her arms round
him and given him a kiss which, despised in
its freshness, had revived in him latterly as
the dearest kiss of all his life. And now this
"daps" of her mother (as they called her in
the dialect here), this perfect copy, why did
she turn away ?
"Your mother was a refined and well-in-
formed woman, I think I remember?"
" She was, sir ; everybody said so."
" I hope you resemble her."
142
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
She archly shook her head and drew warily
away.
" Oh ! one thing more, Avice. I have not
brought much linen, so you must come to the
house every day."
" Very good, sir."
" You won't forget that?"
"Oh no."
Then he let her go. He was a town man,
and she an artless islander, yet he had opened
himself out like a sea-anemone without dis-
turbing the epiderm of her nature. It was
monstrous that a maiden who had assumed the
personality of her of his tenderest memory
should be so impervious. Perhaps it was he
who was wanting. Avice might be Passion
masking as Indifference, because he was so
many years older in outward show.
This brought him to the root of it. In his
heart he was not a day older than when he had
wooed the mother at the daughter's present
age. His record moved on with the years ; his
sentiments stood still.
When he beheld those of his fellows who
were defined as buffers and fogies — imper-
turbable, matter-of-fact, slightly ridiculous
beings, past -masters in the art of populat-
143
THE WELL-BELOVED
ing homes, schools, and colleges, and present
adepts in the science of giving away brides —
how he envied them, assuming them to feel as
they appeared to feel, with their commerce and
their politics, their glasses and their pipes!
They had got past the distracting currents of
passionateness, and were in the calm waters of
middle-aged philosophy. But he, their con-
temporary, was tossed like a cork hither and
thither upon the crest of every fancy, precisely
as he had been tossed when he was half his
present age, with the burden now of double
pain to himself in his growing vision of all as
vanity.
Avice had gone, and he saw her no more
that day. Since he could not again call upon
her, she was as inaccessible as if she had en-
tered the military citadel on the hilltop be-
yond them.
In the evening he went out and paced down
the lane to the Red King's castle overhanging
the cliff, beside whose age the castle he occu-
pied was but a thing of yesterday. Below the
castle precipice lay enormous blocks, which had
fallen from it, and several of them were carved
over with names and initials. He knew the
spot and the old trick well, and by searching
144
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
in the faint moon-rays he found a pair of names
which, as a boy, he himself had cut. They
were " Avice " and " JOCELYN " — Avice Caro's
and his own. The letters were now nearly
worn away by the weather and the brine. But
close by, in quite fresh letters, stood " Ann
Avice," coupled with the name " Isaac."
They could not have been there more than
two or three years, and the " Ann Avice" was
probably Avice the Second. Who was Isaac?
Some boy admirer of her child-time, doubt-
less.
He retraced his steps, and passed the Caros'
house towards his own. The revivified Avice
animated the dwelling, and the light within
the room fell upon the window. She was just
inside that blind.
Whenever she unexpectedly came to the
castle he started and lost placidity. It was
not at her presence as such, but at the new
condition, which seemed to have something
sinister in it. On the other hand, the most
abrupt encounter with him moved her to no
emotion as it had moved her prototype in the
old days. She was indifferent to, almost un-
conscious of, his propinquity. He was no more
k 145
THE WELL-BELOVED
than a statue to her ; she was a growing fire to
him.
A sudden Sapphic terror of love would ever
and anon come upon the sculptor when his
matured reflecting powers would insist upon
informing him of the fearful lapse from reason-
ableness that lay in this infatuation. It threw
him into a sweat. What if now, at last, he
were doomed to do penance for his past emo-
tional wanderings (in a material sense) by being
chained in fatal fidelity to an object that his
intellect despised ? One night he dreamed that
he saw dimly masking behind that young
countenance " the Weaver of Wiles " herself,
" with all her subtle face laughing aloud."
However, the Well-Beloved was alive again —
had been lost and was found. He was amazed
at the change of front in himself. She had
worn the guise of strange women ; she had
been a woman of every class, from the dignified
daughter of some ecclesiastic or peer to a
Nubian almeh with her handkerchief, undu-
lating to the beats of the tom-tom ; but all
these embodiments had been endowed with a
certain smartness, either of the flesh or spirit :
some with wit, a few with talent, and even
genius. But the new impersonation had ap-
146
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
parently nothing beyond sex and prettiness.
She knew not how to sport a fan or handker-
chief, hardly how to pull on a glove.
But her limited life was innocent, and that
went far. Poor little Avice ! her mother's
image : there it all lay. After all, her parent-
age was as good as his own ; it was misfortune
that had sent her down to this. Odd as it
seemed to him, her limitations were largely
what he loved her for. Her rejuvenating
power over him had ineffable charm. He felt
as he had felt when standing beside her prede-
cessor ; but, alas ! he was twenty years farther
onward into the shade.
VII
THE NEW BECOMES ESTABLISHED
A FEW mornings later he was looking through
an upper back window over a screened part of
the garden. The door beneath him opened,
and a figure appeared tripping forth. She
went round out of sight to where the gardener
was at work, and presently returned with a
bunch of green stuff fluttering in each hand.
It was Avice, her dark hair now braided up
snugly under a cap. She sailed on with a rapt
and unconscious face, her thoughts a thousand
removes from him.
How she had suddenly come to be an inmate
of his own house he could not understand, till
he recalled the fact that he had given the castle
servants a whole holiday to attend a review of
the yeomanry in the watering-place over the
bay, on their stating that they could provide a
temporary substitute to stay in the house.
They had evidently called in Avice. To his
148
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
great pleasure he discovered their opinion of
his requirements to be such a mean one that
they had called in no one else.
The Spirit, as she seemed to him, brought
his lunch into the room where he was writing,
and he beheld her uncover it. She went to the
window to adjust a blind which had slipped,
and he had a good view of her profile. It was
not unlike that of one of the three goddesses
in Rubens's " Judgment of Paris," and in con-
tour was nigh perfection. But it was in her
full face that the vision of her mother was
most apparent. " Did you cook all this, Avice?"
he asked, arousing himself.
She turned and half smiled, merely murmur-
ing, "Yes, sir."
Well he knew the arrangement of those
white teeth. In the junction of two of the
upper ones there was a slight irregularity ;
no stranger would have noticed it, nor would
he, but that he knew of the same mark in her
mother's mouth, and looked for it here. Till
Avice the Second had revealed it this moment
by her smile he had never beheld that mark
since the parting from Avice the First, when
she had smiled under his kiss as the copy had
done now.
149
THE WELL-BELOVED
Next morning, when dressing, he heard her
through the rickety floor of the building en-
gaged in conversation with the other servants.
Having by this time regularly installed herself
as the exponent of the Long-pursued — as one
who, by no initiative of his own, had been
chosen by some superior power as the vehicle
of her next debut, she attracted him by the
cadences of her voice ; she would suddenly
drop it to a rich whisper of roguishness, when
the slight rural monotony of its narrative
speech disappeared, and soul and heart — or
what seemed soul and heart — resounded. The
charm lay in the intervals, using that word in
its musical sense. She would say a few sylla-
bles in one note, and end her sentence in a
soft modulation upwards, then downwards,
then into her own note again. The curve of
sound was as artistic as any line of beauty
ever struck by his pencil — as satisfying as
the curves of her who was the World's De-
sire.
The subject of her discourse he cared noth-
ing about — it was no more his interest than
his concern. He took special pains that in
catching her voice he might not comprehend
her words. To the tones he had a right, none
150
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
to the articulations. By degrees he could not
exist long without this sound.
On Sunday evening he found that she went
to church. He followed behind her over the
open road, keeping his eye on the little hat
with its bunch of cock's feathers as on a star.
When she had passed in, Pierston observed
her position and took a seat behind her.
Engaged in the study of her ear and the
nape of her white neck, he suddenly became
aware of the presence of a lady still farther
ahead in the aisle, whose attire, though of
black materials in the quietest form, was of a
cut which rather suggested London than this
Ultima Thide. For the minute he forgot, in
his curiosity, that Avice intervened. The lady
turned her head somewhat, and, though she
was veiled with unusual thickness for the
season, he seemed to recognize Nichola Pine-
Avon in the form.
Why should Mrs. Pine- Avon be there? Pier-
ston asked himself, if it should, indeed, be she.
The end of the service saw his attention
again concentrated on Avice to such a degree
that at the critical moment of moving out he
forgot the mysterious lady In front of her, and
found that she had left the church by the side-
L 151
THE WELL-BELOVED
door. Supposing it to have been Mrs. Pine-
Avon, she would probably be discovered stay-
ing at one of the hotels at the watering-place
over the bay, and to have come along the
Pebble-bank to the island, as so many did, for
an evening drive. For the present, however,
the explanation was not forthcoming; and he
did not seek it.
When he emerged from the church the great
placid eye of the lighthouse at the Beal Point
was open, and he moved thitherward a few
steps to escape Nichola, or her double, and the
rest of the congregation. Turning at length,
he hastened homeward along the now deserted
trackway, intending to overtake the revitalized
Avice. But he could see nothing of her, and
concluded that she had walked too fast for
him. Arrived at his own gate, he paused a
moment, and perceived that Avice's little free-
hold was still in darkness. She had not
come.
He retraced his steps, but could not find her,
the only persons on the road being a man and
his wife, as he knew them to be, though he
could not see them, from the words of the
man:
" If you had not already married me, you'd
152
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
cut my acquaintance ! That's a pretty thing
for a wife to say !"
The remark struck his ear unpleasantly, and
by-and-by he went back again. Avice's cottage
was now lighted : she must have come round
by the other road. Satisfied that she was
safely domiciled for the night, he opened the
gate of Sylvania Castle and retired to his room
also.
Eastward from the grounds the cliffs were
rugged and the view of the opposite coast
picturesque in the extreme. A little door
from the lawn gave him immediate access to
the rocks and shore on this side. Without the
door was a dip-well of pure water, which pos-
sibly had supplied the inmates of the adjoining
and now ruinous Red King's castle at the time
of its erection. On a sunny morning he was
meditating here when he discerned a figure on
the shore below spreading white linen upon
the pebbly strand.
Jocclyn descended. Avice, as he had sup-
posed, had now returned to her own occupa-
tion. Her shapely pink arms, though slight,
were plump enough to show dimples at the
elbows, and were set off by her purple cotton
153
THE WELL-BELOVED
print, which the shore breeze licked and tanta-
lized. He stood near, without speaking. The
wind dragged a shirt-sleeve from the " popple,"
or pebble, which held it down. Pierston stoop-
ed and put a heavier one in its place.
" Thank you," she said, quietly. She turned
up her hazel eyes, and seemed gratified to per-
ceive that her assistant was Pierston. She had
plainly been so wrapped in her own thoughts
— gloomy thoughts, by their signs — that she
had not considered him till then.
The young girl continued to converse with
him in friendly frankness, showing neither
ardor nor shyness. As for love — it was evi-
dently farther from her mind than even death
and dissolution.
When one of the sheets became intractable
Jocelyn said, " Do you hold it down and I'll
put the popples."
She acquiesced, and in placing a pebble his
hand touched hers.
It was a young hand, rather long and thin, a
little damp and coddled from her slopping. In
setting down the last stone he laid it, by a
pure accident, rather heavily on her fingers.
" I am very, very sorry !" Jocelyn exclaimed.
" Oh, I have bruised the skin, Avice !" He
154
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
seized her fingers to examine the damage
done.
"No, sir, you haven't!" she cried, lumi-
nously, allowing him to retain her hand with-
out the least objection. " Why — that's where
I scratched it this morning with a pin. You
didn't hurt me a bit with the popple-stone !"
Although her gown was purple, there was a
little black crape bow upon each arm. He
knew what it meant, and it saddened him. " Do
you ever visit your mother's grave?" he asked.
" Yes, sir, sometimes. I am going there to-
night to water the daisies."
She had now finished here, and they part-
ed. That evening, when the sky was red, he
emerged by the garden-door and passed her
house. The blinds were not down, and he
could see her sewing within. While he
paused she sprang up as if she had forgotten
the hour, and tossed on her hat. Jocelyn
strode ahead and round the corner, and was
half way up the straggling street before he
discerned her little figure behind him.
He hastened past the lads and young wom-
en with clinking buckets who were drawing
water from the fountains by the wayside, and
took the direction of the church. With the
i55
THE WELL-BELOVED
disappearance of the sun the lighthouse had
again set up its flame against the sky, the
dark church rising in the foreground. Here
he allowed her to overtake him.
" You loved your mother much?" said Joce-
lyn.
" 1 did, sir ; of course, I did," said the girl,
who tripped so lightly that it seemed he
might have carried her on his hand.
Pierston wished to say, " So did I," but did
not like to disclose events which she, appar-
ently, did not guess. Avice fell into thought,
and continued :
" Mother had a very sad life for some time
when she was about as old as I. I should not
like mine to be as hers. Her young man
proved false to her because she wouldn't
agree to meet him one night, and it grieved
mother almost all her life. I wouldn't ha'
fretted about him, if I'd been she. She would
never name his name, but I think he was a
wicked, cruel man ; and I hate to think of him."
After this he could not go into the church-
yard with her, and wralked onward alone to
the south of the isle. He was wretched all
night. Yet he would not have stood where
he did stand in the ranks of an imaginative
156
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
profession if he had not been at the mercy of
every succubus of the fancy that can beset
man. It was in his weaknesses as a citizen
and a national unit that his strength lay as an
artist, and he felt it childish to complain of
susceptibilities not only innate but cultivated.
But he was paying dearly enough for his
Liliths. He saw a terrible vengeance ahead.
What had he done to be tormented like this?
The Beloved, after flitting from Nichola Pine-
Avon to the phantom of a dead woman whom
he never adored in her lifetime, had taken up
her abode in the living representative of the
dead, with a permanence of hold which the
absolute indifference of that little brown-eyed
representative only seemed to intensify.
Did he really wish to proceed to marriage
with this chit of a girl? He did; the wish
had come at last. It was true that as he
studied her he saw defects in addition to her
social insufficiencies. Judgment, hoodwinked
as it was, told him that she was colder in
nature, commoner in character, than that well-
read, bright little woman, Avice the First.
But twenty years make a difference in ideals,
and the added demands of middle-age in
physical form are more than balanced by its
i57
THE WELL-BELOVED
concessions as to the spiritual content. He
looked at himself in the glass, and felt glad
at those inner deficiencies in Avice which for-
merly would have impelled him to reject her.
There was a strange difference in his regard
of his present folly and of his love in his
youthful time. Now he could be mad with
method, knowing it to be madness ; then he
was compelled to make believe his madness
wisdom. In those days any flash of reason
upon his loved one's imperfections was blurred
over hastily and with fear. Such penetrative
vision now did not cool him. He knew he
was the creature of a tendency ; and passively
acquiesced.
To use a practical eye, it appeared that, as
he had once thought, this Caro family —
though it might not for centuries, or ever,
furbish up an individual nature which would
exactly, ideally, supplement his own imper-
fect one and round with it the perfect whole
— was yet the only family he had ever met, or
was likely to meet, which possessed the materi-
als for her making. It was as if the Caros had
found the clay but not the potter, while other
families whose daughters might attract him
had found the potter but not the clay.
158
VIII
HIS OWN SOUL CONFRONTS HIM
From his roomy castle, and its grounds and
the cliffs hard by, he could command every
move and aspect of her who was the rejuve-
nated Spirit of the Past to him — in the efful-
gence of whom all sordid details were disre-
garded.
Among other things, he observed that she
was often anxious when it rained. If, af-
ter a wet day, a golden streak appeared in
the sky over Deadman's Bay, under a lid of
cloud, her manner was joyous and her tread
light.
This puzzled him ; and he found that if he
endeavored to encounter her at these times
she shunned him — stealthily and subtly, but
unmistakably. One evening, when she had left
her cottage and tripped off in the direction of
the under-hill townlet, he set out by the same
route, resolved to await her return along the
159
THE WELL-BELOVED
high roadway which stretched between that
place and East Quarriers.
He reached the top of the old road, where
it makes a sudden descent to the townlet, but
she did not appear. Turning back, he saun-
tered along till he had nearly reached his own
house again. Then he retraced his steps, and
in the dim night he walked backward and
forward on the bare and lofty convex of the
isle ; the stars above and around him, the
lighthouse on duty at the distant point, the
light -ship winking from the sand -bank, the
combing of the pebble-beach by the tide be-
neath, the church away southwestward, where
the island fathers lay.
He walked the wild summit till his legs
ached and his heart ached — till he seemed
to hear on the upper wind the stones of the
Slingers whizzing past, and the voices of the
invaders who annihilated them and married
their wives and daughters, and produced Avice
as the ultimate flower of the combined stocks.
Still she did not come. It was more than
foolish to wait, yet he could not help waiting.
At length he discerned a dot of a figure, which
he knew to be hers rather by its motion than
by its shape.
1 60
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
How incomparably the immaterial dream
dwarfed the grandest of substantial things,
when here, between those three sublimities —
the sky, the rock, and the ocean — the minute
personality of this washer-girl filled his con-
sciousness to its extremest boundary, and the
stupendous inanimate scene shrank to a corner
therein !
But all at once the approaching figure had
disappeared. He looked about ; she had cer-
tainly vanished. At one side of the road was
a low wall, but she could not have gone be-
hind that without considerable trouble and
singular conduct. He looked behind him ;
she had reappeared farther on the road.
Jocelyn Pierston hurried after; and, discern-
ing his movement, Avice stood still. When
he came up, she was slyly shaking with re-
strained laughter.
" Well, what does this mean, my dear girl?"
he asked.
Her inner mirth escaping in spite of her, she
turned askance and said : " When you was
following me to Street o' Wells two hours
ago, I looked round and saw you, and huddied
behind a stone. You passed and brushed my
frock without seeing me. And when, on my
l 161
THE WELL-BELOVED
way backalong, I saw you waiting hereabout
again, I slipped over the wall, and ran past
you. If I had not stopped and looked round
at 'ee, you would never have catched me."
" What did you do that for, you elf?"
" That you shouldn't find me."
" That's not exactly a reason. Give another,
dear Avice," he said, as he turned and walked
beside her homeward.
She hesitated. " Come !" he urged again.
" 'Twas because I thought you wanted to
be my young man," she answered.
" What a wild thought of yours ! Suppos-
ing I did, wouldn't you have me?"
" Not now. . . . And not for long, even if it
had been sooner than now."
"Why?"
" If I tell you, you won't laugh at me or let
anybody else know?"
" Never."
" Then I will tell you," she said, quite seri-
ously. " 'Tis because I get tired o' my lovers
as soon as I get to know them well. What I
see in one young man for a while soon leaves
him and goes into another yonder, and I fol-
low, and then what I admire fades out of him
and springs up somewhere else ; and so I fol-
162
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
low on, and never fix to one. I have loved
fifteen a ready ! Yes, fifteen; I am almost
ashamed to say," she repeated, laughing. " I
can't help it, sir, I assure you. Of course it is
really, to me, the same one all through, on'y
I can't catch him !" She added, anxiously,
"You won't tell anybody o' this in me, will
you, sir? Because if it were known I am
afraid no man would like me."
Pierston was surprised into stillness. Here
was this obscure and almost illiterate girl en-
gaged in the pursuit of the impossible ideal,
just as he had been himself doing for the
last twenty years. She was doing it quite
involuntarily, by sheer necessity of her or-
ganization, puzzled all the while at her own
instinct. He suddenly thought of its bear-
ing upon himself, and said, with a sinking
heart :
"Am I— one of them?"
She pondered critically.
" You was — for a week — when I first saw
_ >>
you.
" Only a week?"
"About that."
"What made the being of your fancy for-
sake my form and go elsewhere ?M
i c3
THE WELL-BELOVED
" Well — though you seemed handsome and
gentlemanly at first — "
"Yes?"
" I found 'ee too old soon after."
" You are a candid young person."
" But you asked me, sir !" she expostu-
lated.
" I did ; and, having been answered, I won't
intrude upon you longer. So cut along home
as fast as you can. It is getting late."
When she had passed out of earshot he also
followed homeward. This seeking of the
Well -Beloved was, then, of the nature of a
knife which could cut two ways. To be the
seeker was one thing ; to be one of the
corpses from which the ideal inhabitant had
departed was another ; and this was what he
had become now, in the mockery of new
Days.
Drawing near his own gate he smelled to-
bacco, and could discern two figures in the
side lane leading past Avice's door. They did
not, however, enter her house, but strolled on-
ward to the narrow pass conducting to Red
King's castle and the sea. He was in momen-
tary heaviness at the thought that they might
be Avice with a worthless lover, but a faintly
164
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
argumentative tone from the man informed
him that they were the same married couple
going homeward whom he had encountered
on a previous occasion.
The next day he gave the servants a half-
holiday to get the pretty Avice into the castle
again for a few hours, the better to observe
her. While she was pulling down the blinds
at sunset a whistle of peculiar quality came
from some point on the cliffs outside the
lawn. He observed that her color rose slight-
ly, though she bustled about as if she had
noticed nothing.
Pierston suddenly suspected that she had
not only fifteen past admirers, but a current
one. Still, he might be mistaken. Stimu-
lated now by ancient memories and present
tenderness to use every effort to make her his
wife, despite her conventional unfitness, he
strung himself up to sift this mystery. If he
could only win her — and how could a country
girl refuse such an opportunity? — he could
pack her off to school for two or three years,
marry her, enlarge her mind by a little travel,
and take his chance of the rest. As to her
want of ardor for him — so sadly in contrast
with her sainted mother's affection — a man
165
THE WELL-BELOVED
twenty years older than his bride could expect
no better, and he would be well content to put
up with it in the pleasure of possessing one in
whom seemed to linger as an aroma all the
charm of his youth and his early home.
IX
JUXTAPOSITIONS
It was a sad and leaden afternoon, and
Pierston paced up the long, steep pass, or
Street of Wells. On either side of the
road young girls stood with pitchers at the
fountains which bubbled there, and behind
the houses forming the propylaea of the rock
rose the massive forehead of the isle — crested
at this part with its enormous ramparts as
with a mural crown.
As you approach the upper end of the
street all progress seems about to be checked
by the almost vertical face of the escarpment.
Into it your track apparently runs point-
blank: a confronting mass which, if it were to
slip down, would overwhelm the whole town.
But in a moment you find that the road, the
old Roman highway into the peninsula, turns
at a sharp angle when it reaches the base of
the scrap, and ascends in the stiffest of in-
M 167
THE WELL-BELOVED
clines to the right. To the left there is also
another ascending road, modern, almost as
steep as the first, and perfectly straight.
This is the road to the forts.
Pierston arrived at the forking of the ways,
and paused for breath. Before turning to the
right, his proper and picturesque course, he
looked up the uninteresting left road to the
fortifications. It was new, long, white, regu-
lar, tapering to a vanishing point, like a les-
son in perspective. About a quarter of the
way up a girl was resting beside a basket of
white linen ; and by the shape of her hat
and the nature of her burden he recognized
her.
She did not see him, and, abandoning the
right-hand course, he slowly ascended the in-
cline she had taken. He observed that her
attention was absorbed by something aloft.
He followed the direction of her gaze. Above
them towered the green -gray mountain of
grassy stone, here levelled at the top by
military art. The skyline was broken every
now and then by a little peg-like object — a
sentry-box ; and near one of these a small red
spot kept creeping backward and forward
monotonously against the heavy sky.
168
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
Then he divined that she had a soldier-
lover.
She turned her head, saw him, and took up
her clothes-basket to continue the ascent.
The steepness was such that to climb it unen-
cumbered was a breathless business ; the lin-
en made her task a cruelty to her. " You'll
never get to the forts with that weight," he
said. "Give it to me."
But she would not, and he stood still,
watching her as she panted up the way ; for
the moment an irradiated being, the epitome
of a whole sex ; by the beams of his own in-
fatuation
..." robed in such exceeding glory
That he beheld her not ;"
beheld her not as she really was, as she was
even to himself sometimes. But to the
soldier what was she ? Smaller and smaller
she waned up the rigid mathematical road,
still gazing at the soldier aloft, as Pierston
gazed at her. He could just discern sentinels
springing up at the different coigns of vantage
that she passed, but, seeing who she was, they
did not intercept her ; and presently she
crossed the drawbridge over the enormous
169
THE WELL-BELOVED
chasm surrounding the forts, passed the sen-
tries there also, and disappeared through the
arch into the interior. Pierston could not
see the sentry now, and there occurred to him
the hateful idea that this scarlet rival was
meeting and talking freely to her, the unpro-
tected orphan girl of his sweet, original Avice;
perhaps, relieved of duty, escorting her across
the interior, carrying her basket, her tender
body encircled by his arm.
" What the devil are you staring at, as if
you were in a trance?"
Pierston turned his head, and there stood
his old friend Somers — still looking the long-
leased bachelor that he was.
" I might say what the devil do you do
here? if I weren't so glad to see you."
Somers said that he had come to see what
was detaining his friend in such an out-of-the-
way place at that time of year, and incident-
ally to get some fresh air into his own lungs.
Pierston made him welcome, and they went
towards Sylvania Castle.
" You were staring, as far as I could see, at
a pretty little washerwoman with a basket of
clothes," resumed the painter.
"Yes; it was that to you, but not to me.
170
A YOUNG MAN Of FORTY
Behind the mere pretty island girl (to the
world) is, in my eye, the Idea, in Platonic
phraseology — the essence and epitome of all
that is desirable in this existence, ... I am
under a doom, Somers. Yes, I am under a
doom. To have been always following a
phantom whom I saw in woman after woman
while she was at a distance, but vanishing
away on close approach, was bad enough ; but
now the terrible thing is that the phantom
does not vanish, but stays to tantalize me
even when I am near enough to see what it
is! That girl holds me, though my eyes are
open, and though I see that I am a fool !"
Somers regarded the visionary look of his
friend, which rather intensified than decreased
as his years wore on, but made no further re-
mark. When they reached the castle Somers
gazed round upon the scenery, and Pierston,
signifying the quaint little Elizabethan cot-
tage, said, " That's where she lives."
"What a romantic place! — and this island
altogether. A man might love a scarecrow or
turnip-lantern here."
"But a woman mightn't. Scenery doesn't
impress them, though they pretend it does.
This girl is as fickle as — "
171
THE WELL-BELOVED
"You once were."
" Exactly — from your point of view. She
has told me so — candidly. And it hits me
hard."
Somers stood still in sudden thought. "Well
— that is a strange turning of the tables !" he
said. " But you wouldn't really marry her,
Pierston ?"
" I would — to-morrow. Why shouldn't I ?
What are fame and name and society to me —
a descendant: of wreckers and smugglers, like
her. Besides, I know what she's made of,
my boy, to her innermost fibre ; I know the
perfect and pure quarry she was dug from,
and that gives a man confidence."
"Then you'll win."
While they were sitting after dinner that
evening their quiet discourse was interrupted
by the long low whistle from the cliffs with-
out. Somers took no notice, but Pierston
marked it. That whistle always occurred at
the same time in the evening when Avice was
helping in the house. He excused himself
for a moment to his visitor and went out
upon the dark lawn. A crunching of feet
upon the gravel mixed in with the articula-
172
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
tion of the sea— steps light as if they were
winged. And he supposed, two minutes
later, that the mouth of some hulking fellow
was upon hers, which he himself hardly vent-
ured to look at, so touching was its young
beauty.
Hearing people about — among others a
couple quarrelling, for there were rough as
well as gentle people here in the island — he
returned to the house. Next day Somers
roamed abroad to look for scenery for a
marine painting, and, going out to seek him,
Pierston met Avice.
" So you have a lover, my lady !" he said,
severely. She admitted that it was the fact.
" You won't stick to him," he continued.
" I think I may this one," said she, in a
meaning tone that he failed to fathom. " He
deserted me once, but he won't again."
" I suppose he's a wonderful sort of fellow."
" He's good enough for me."
"So handsome, no doubt."
" Handsome enough for me."
" So refined and respectable."
" Refined and respectable enough for me."
He could not disturb her equanimity, and
let her pass. The next day was Sunday, and,
i73
THE WELL-BELOVED
Somers having chosen his view at the other
end of the island, Pierston determined in the
afternoon to see Avice's lover. He found that
she had left her cottage stronghold, and went
on towards the lighthouses at the Beal. Turn-
ing back when he had reached the nearest, he
saw on the lonely road between the quarries a
young man evidently connected with the stone
trade, with Avice the Second upon his arm.
She looked prettily guilty and blushed a lit-
tle under his glance. The man's was one of
the typical island physiognomies — his features
energetic and wary in their expression, and
half covered with a close, crisp, black beard.
Pierston fancied that out of his keen dark eyes
there glimmered a dry sense of humor at the
situation.
If so, Avice must have told him of Pierston's
symptoms of tenderness. This girl whom, for
her dear mother's sake more than for her own
unquestionable attractiveness, he would have
guarded as the apple of his eye, how could she
estimate him so flippantly?
The mortification of having brought himself
to this position with the antitype by his early
slight of the type blinded him for the moment
to what struck him a short time after. The
174
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
man upon whose arm she hung was not a sol-
dier. What, then, became of her entranced
gaze at the sentinel ? She could hardly have
transferred her affections so promptly ; or, to
give her the benefit of his own theory, her
Beloved could scarcely have flitted from frame
to frame in so very brief an interval. And
which of them had been he who whistled soft-
ly in the dusk to her?
Without further attempt to find Alfred
Somers, Pierston walked homeward, moodily
thinking that the desire to make reparation to
the original woman by wedding and enriching
the copy — which lent such an unprecedented
permanence to his new love — was thwarted,
as if by set intention of his destiny.
At the door of the grounds about the castle
there stood a carriage. He observed that it
was not one of the homely flys from the un-
der-hill town, but apparently from the fashion-
able town across the bay. Wondering why
the visitor had not driven in, he entered, to
find in the drawing-room Nichola Pine-Avon.
At his first glance upon her, fashionably
dressed and graceful in movement, she seemed
beautiful; at the second, when he observed
that her face was pale and agitated, she
175
THE WELL-BELOVED
seemed pathetic likewise. Altogether, she
was now a very different figure from her who,
sitting in her chair with such finished compos-
ure, had snubbed him in her drawing-room in
Hamptonshire Square.
" You are surprised at this ? Of course you
are," she said, in a low, pleading voice, lan-
guidly lifting her heavy eyelids, while he was
holding her hand. " But I couldn't help it. I
know I have done something to offend you —
have I not ? Oh, what can it be, that you
have come away to this outlandish rock, to
live with barbarians in the midst of the Lon-
don season?"
" You have not offended me, dear Mrs. Pine-
Avon," he said. " How sorry I am that you
should have supposed it ! Yet I am glad, too,
that your fancy should have done me the good
turn of bringing you here to see me."
" I am staying at Budmouth-Regis," she ex-
plained.
" Then I did see you at a church-service
here a little while back?"
She blushed faintly upon her pallor, and she
sighed. Their eyes met. " Well," she said, at
last, " I don't know why I shouldn't show the
virtue of candor. You know what it means.
176
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
I was the stronger once ; now I am the weak-
er. Whatever pain I may have given you in
the ups and downs of our acquaintance I am
sorry for, and would willingly repair all errors
of the past by — being amenable to reason in
the future."
It was impossible that Jocelyn should not
feel a tender impulsion towards this attractive
and once independent woman, who from every
worldly point of view was an excellent match
for him — a superior match, indeed, except in
money. He took her hand again and held it
awhile, and a faint wave of gladness seemed
to flow through her. But no — he could go no
further. That island girl, in her coquettish
Sunday frock and little hat with its bunch of
cock's feathers, held him as by strands of
Manila rope. He dropped Nichola's hand.
" I am leaving Budmouth to-morrow," she
said. " That was why I felt I must call. You
did not know I had been there all through the
Whitsun holidays?"
" I did not, indeed, or I should have come
to see you."
" I didn't like to write. I wish I had, now!"
" I wish you had, too, dear Mrs. Pine-Avon."
But it was "Nichola " that she wanted to be.
M 177
THE WELL-BELOVED
As they reached the landau he told her that
he should be back in town himself again soon,
and would call immediately. At the moment
of his words Avice Caro, now alone, passed
close along by the carriage on the other side
towards her house hard at hand. She did not
turn head or eye to the pair; they seemed to
be in her view objects of indifference.
Pierston became cold as a stone. The chill
towards Nichola that the presence of the girl
— sprite, witch, troll that she was — brought
with it came like a doom. He knew what a
fool he was, as he had said. But he was power-
less in the grasp of the idealizing passion. He
cared more for Avice's finger-tips than for Mrs.
Pine-Avon's whole personality.
Perhaps Nichola saw it, for she said, mourn-
fully : " Now I have done all I could ! I felt
that the only counterpoise to my cruelty to
you in my drawing-room would be to come as
a suppliant to yours."
" It is most handsome and noble of you, my
very dear friend !" said he, with an emotion
of courtesy rather than of enthusiasm.
Then adieux were spoken, and she drove
away. But Pierston saw only the retreating
Avice, and knew that he was helpless in her
178
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
hands. The church of the island had risen
near the foundations of the Pagan temple, and
a Christian emanation from the former might
be wrathfully torturing him through the very
false gods to whom he had devoted himself
both in his craft, like Demetrius of Ephesus,
and in his heart. Perhaps divine punishment
for his idolatries had come.
X
SHE FAILS TO VANISH STILL
PlERSTON had not turned far back towards
the castle when he was overtaken by Somers
and the man who carried his painting lumber.
They paced together to the door ; the man
deposited the articles and went away, and the
two walked up and down before entering.
" I met an extremely interesting woman in
the road out there," said the painter.
" Ah, she is ! A sprite, a sylph ; Psyche in-
deed !"
" I was struck with her."
" It shows how beauty will out through the
homeliest guise."
" Yes, it will ; though not always. And this
case doesn't prove it, for the lady's attire was
in the latest and most approved taste."
" Oh, you mean the lady who was driv-
ing?
" Of course. What ! were you thinking of
1 80
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
the pretty little cottage-girl outside here ? I
did meet her, but what's she ? Very well for
one's picture, though hardly for one's fireside.
This lady — "
" Is Mrs. Pine-Avon. A kind, proud wom-
an, who'll do what people with no pride
would not condescend to think of. She is
leaving Budmouth to-morrow, and she drove
across to see me. You know how things
seemed to be going with us at one time? But
I am no good to any woman. She's been
very generous towards me, which I've not
been to her. . . . She'll ultimately throw her-
self away upon some wretch, unworthy of her,
no doubt."
"Do you think so?" murmured Somers.
After a while he said, abruptly, " I'll marry
her myself, if she'll have me. I like the look
of her."
M I wish you would, Alfred, or rather could.
She has long had an idea of slipping out of
the world of fashion into the world of art.
She is a woman of individuality and earnest
instincts. I am in real trouble about her. I
won't say she can be won — it would be un-
generous of me to say that. But try. I can
bring you together easily."
181
THE WELL-BELOVED
"I'll marry her, if she's willing !" With
the phlegmatic dogmatism that was part of
him, Somers added, " When you have decid-
ed to marry, take the first nice woman you
meet. They are all alike."
"Well — you don't know her yet," replied
Jocelyn, who could give praise where he could
not give love.
" But you do, and I'll take her on the
strength of your judgment. Is she really
handsome? — I had but the merest glance.
But I know she is, or she wouldn't have
caught your discriminating eye."
" You may take my word for it ; she looks
as well at hand as afar."
" What color are her eyes?"
"Her eyes? I don't go much into color,
being professionally sworn to form. But, let
me see — gray ; and her hair rather light than
dark brown."
" I wanted something darker," said Somers,
airily. "There are so many fair models among
native Englishwomen. Still, blondes are use-
ful property ! . . . Well, well ; this is flippancy.
But I liked the look of her."
Somers had gone back to town. It was a
182
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
wet day on the little peninsula, but Pierston
walked out as far as the garden-house of his
hired castle, where he sat down and smoked.
This erection being on the boundary-wall of
his property, his ear could now and then catch
the tones of Avice's voice from her open-
doored cottage in the lane which skirted his
fence ; and he noticed that there were no
modulations in it. He knew why that was.
She wished to go out, and could not. He
had observed before that when she was plan-
ning an outing a particular note would come
into her voice during the preceding hours — a
dove's roundness of sound ; no doubt the ef-
fect upon her voice of her thoughts of her
lover, or lovers. Yet the latter it could not
be. She was pure and single-hearted ; half an
eye could see that. Whence, then, the two
men ? Possibly the quarrier was a relation.
There seemed reason in this when, going
out into the lane, he encountered one of the
red-jackets he had been thinking of. Soldiers
were seldom seen in this outer part of the
isle; their beat from the forts, when on pleas-
ure, was in the opposite direction, and this
man must have had a special reason for com-
ing hither. Pierston surveyed him. lie was
N
THE WELL-BELOVED
a round-faced, good-humored fellow to look
at, having two little pieces of mustache on
his upper lip, like a pair of minnows ram-
pant, and small black eyes, over which the
Glengarry cap straddled flat. It was a hate-
ful idea that her tender cheek should be
kissed by the lips of this heavy young man,
who had never been sublimed by a single bat-
tle, even with defenceless savages.
The soldier went before her house, looked
at the door, and moved on down the crooked
way to the cliffs, where there was a path back
to the forts. But he did not adopt it, return-
ing by the way he had come. This showed
his wish to pass the house again. She gave
no sign, however, and the soldier disappeared.
Pierston could not be satisfied that Avice
was in the house, and he crossed over to the
front of her little freehold and tapped at the
door, which stood ajar.
Nobody came ; hearing a slight movement
within, he crossed the threshold. Avice was
there alone, sitting on a low stool in a dark
corner, as though she wished to be unob-
served by any casual passer-by. She looked
up at him without emotion or apparent sur-
prise ; but he could then see that she was
184
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
crying. The view, for the first time, of dis-
tress in an unprotected young girl, towards
whom he felt drawn by ties of extraordinary
delicacy and tenderness, moved Pierston be-
yond measure. He entered without cere-
mony.
" Avice, my dear girl I" he said. " Some-
thing is the matter I"
She looked assent, and he went on : " Now
tell me all about it. Perhaps I can help you.
Come, tell me."
"I can't," she murmured. "Gammer Stock-
wool is upstairs, and she'll hear !" Mrs. Stock-
wool was the old woman who had come to
live with the girl for company since her
mother's death.
" Then come into my garden opposite.
There we shall be quite private."
She rose, put on her hat, and accompanied
him to the door. Here she asked him if the
lane were empty, and on his assuring her that
it was she crossed over and entered with him
through the garden-wall.
The place was a shady and secluded one,
though through the boughs the sea could be
n quite near at hand, its moanings being
distinctly audible. A water-drop from a tree
185
THE WELL-BELOVED
fell here and there, but the rain was not
enough to hurt them.
" Now let me hear it," he said, soothingly.
" You may tell me with the greatest freedom.
I was a friend of your mother's, you know.
That is, I knew her; and I'll be a friend of
yours."
The statement was risky, if he wished her
not to suspect him of being her mother's false
one. But that lover's name appeared to be
unknown to the present Avice.
" I can't tell you, sir," she replied, unwilling-
ly ; " except that it has to do with my own
changeableness. The rest is the secret of
somebody else."
" I am sorry for that," said he.
" I am getting to care for one I ought not
to think of, and it means ruin. I ought to get
away !"
" You mean from the island ?"
"Yes."
Pierston reflected. His presence in London
had been desired for some time ; yet he had
delayed going because of his new solicitudes
here. But to go and take her with him would
afford him opportunity of watching over her,
tending her mind, and developing it ; while it
J86
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
might remove her from some looming danger.
It was a somewhat awkward guardianship for
him, as a lonely man, to carry out ; still, it
could be done. He asked her abruptly if she
would really like to go away for a while.
" I like best to stay here," she answered.
" Still, I should not mind going somewhere,
because I think I ought to."
" Would you like London ?"
Avice's face lost its weeping shape. " How
could that be ?" she said.
" I have been thinking that you could come
to my house and make yourself useful in some
way. I rent just now one of those new places
called flats, which you may have heard of, and
I have a studio at the back."
" I haven't heard of 'em," she said, without
interest.
"Well, I have two servants there, and, as
my man has a holiday, you can help them for
a month or two."
"Would polishing furniture be any good?
I can do that."
" I haven't much furniture that requires
polishing. Hut you can clear away plaster
and clay messes in the studio, and chippings
of stone, and help me in modelling, and dust
187
THE WELL-BELOVED
all my Venus failures, and hands and heads
and feet and bones and other objects."
She was startled, yet attracted by the novel-
ty of the proposal.
" Only for a time," she said.
" Only for a time. As short as you like, and
as long."
The deliberate manner in which, after the
first surprise, Avice discussed the arrange-
ments that he suggested might have told him
how far was any feeling for himself, beyond
friendship, and possibly gratitude, from agitat-
ing her breast. Yet there was nothing ex-
travagant in the discrepancy between their
ages, and he hoped, after shaping her to him-
self, to win her. What had grieved her to
tears she would not more particularly tell.
She had naturally not much need of prepa-
ration, but she made even less preparation
than he would have expected her to require.
She seemed eager to be off immediately, and
not a soul was to know of her departure.
Why, if she were in love and at first averse to
leave the island, she should be so precipitate
now he failed to understand.
But he took great care to compromise in no
way a girl in whom his interest was as pro-
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
tective as it was passionate. He accordingly
left her to get out of the island alone, await-
ing her at a station a few miles up the railway,
where, discovering himself to her through the
carriage window, he entered the next compart-
ment, his frame pervaded by a glow which was
almost joy at having for the first time in his
charge one who inherited the flesh and bore
the name so early associated with his own, and
at the prospect of putting things right which
had been wrong through many years.
XI
THE IMAGE PERSISTS
It was dark when the four-wheeled cab
wherein he had brought Avice from the sta-
tion stood at the entrance to the pile of flats
of which Pierston occupied one floor — rarer
then as residences in London than they are
now. Leaving Avice to alight and get the
luggage taken in by the porter, Pierston went
up-stairs. To his surprise his floor was silent,
and, on entering with a latch-key, the rooms
were all in darkness. He descended to the
hall, where Avice was standing helpless beside
the luggage, while the porter was outside with
the cabman.
" Do you know what has become of my ser-
vants?" asked Jocelyn.
"What — and ain't they there, saur? Ah,
then, my belief is that what I suspected is
thrue ! You didn't leave your wine-cellar un-
locked, did you, saur, by no mistake?"
190
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
Pierston considered. He thought he might
have left the key with his elder servant, whom
he had believed he could trust, especially as
the cellar was not well stocked.
"Ah, then, it was so! She's been very
queer, saur, this last week or two. Oh yes,
sending messages down the spakin'-tube
which were like madness itself, and ordering
us this and that, till we would take no notice
at all. I see them both go out last night, and
possibly they went for a holiday, not expect-
ing ye, or maybe for good ! Shure, if ye'd
written, saur, I'd ha' got the place ready, ye
being out of a man, too, though it's not me
duty at all !"
When Pierston got to his floor again he
found that the cellar door was open ; some
bottles were standing empty that had been
full, and many abstracted altogether. All
other articles in the house, however, appeared
to be intact. His letter to his housekeeper
lay in the box as the postman had left it.
By this time the luggage had been sent up
in the lift ; and Avice, like so much more lug-
,e, stood at the door, the hall-porter behind
offering his assistance.
" Come here, Avice," said the sculptor.
191
THE WELL-BELOVED
"What shall we do now? Here's a pretty-
state of affairs!"
Avice could suggest nothing, till she was
struck with the bright thought that she
should light a fire.
" Light a fire ? Ah, yes. ... I wonder if we
could manage. This is an odd coincidence —
and awkward !" he murmured. " Very well,
light a fire."
" Is this the kitchen, sir, all mixed up with
the parlors ?"
"Yes."
"Then I think I can do all that's wanted
here for a bit ; at any rate, till you can get
help, sir. At least, I could if I could find
the fuel-house. 'Tis no such big place as I
thought !"
"That's right — take courage!" said he, with
a tender smile. " Now, I'll dine out this even-
ing, and leave the place for you to arrange as
best you can with the help of the porter's wife
down-stairs."
This Pierston accordingly did, and so their
common residence began. Feeling more and
more strongly that some danger awaited her
in her native island, he determined not to send
her back till the lover or lovers who seemed
192
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
to trouble her should have cooled off. He
was quite willing to take the risk of his action
thus far in his solicitous regard for her.
It was a dual solitude, indeed; for, though
Pierston and Avice were the only two people
in the flat, they did not keep each other com-
pany, the former being as scrupulously fearful
of going near her now that he had the oppor-
tunity as he had been prompt to seek her
when he had none. They lived in silence, his
messages to her being frequently written on
scraps of paper deposited where she could see
them. It was not without a pang that he noted
her unconsciousness of their isolated position
— a position to which, had she experienced
any reciprocity of sentiment, she would read-
ily have been alive.
Considering that, though not profound, she
was hardly a matter-of-fact girl, as that phrase
is commonly understood, she was exasperating
in the matter-of-fact quality of her responses
to the friendly remarks which would escape
him in spite of himself, as well as in her gen-
eral conduct. Whenever he formed some culi-
nary excuse for walking across the few yards
of tessellated hall which separated his room
n 193
THE WELL-BELOVED
from the kitchen and spoke through the door-
way to her, she answered, " Yes, sir," or " No,
sir," without turning her eyes from the partic-
ular work that she was engaged in.
In the usual course, he would have obtained
a couple of properly qualified servants immedi-
ately ; but he lived on with the one, or rather
the less than one, that this cottage-girl af-
forded. It had been his almost invariable cus-
tom to dine at one of his clubs. Now he sat
at home over the miserable chop or steak, to
which he limited himself, in dread lest she
should complain of there being too much work
for one person and demand to be sent home.
A charwoman came every two or three days,
effecting an extraordinary consumption of food
and alcoholic liquids : yet it was not for this
that Pierston dreaded her presence, but lest, in
conversing with Avice, she should open the
girl's eyes to the oddity of her situation. Avice
could see for herself that there must have been
two or three servants in the flat during his for-
mer residence there; but his reasons for doing
without them seemed never to strike her.
His intention had been to keep her occupied
exclusively at the studio, but accident had
modified this. However, he sent her round
194
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
one morning, and, entering himself shortly
after, found her engaged in wiping the layers
of dust from the casts and models.
The color of the dust never ceased to amaze
her. " It is like the hold of a Budmouth col-
lier," she said, "and the beautiful faces of these
clay people are quite spoiled by it."
" I suppose you'll marry, some day, Avice ?"
remarked Pierston,as he regarded her thought-
fully.
" Some do and some don't," she said, with a
reserved smile, still attending to the casts.
" You are very offhand," said he.
She archly weighed that remark without
further speech. It was tantalizing conduct in
the face of his instinct to cherish her ; espe-
cially when he regarded the charm of her bend-
ing profile, the well-characterized though softly
lined nose, the round chin, with, as it were, a
second leap in its curve to the throat, and the
sweep of the eyelashes over the rosy cheek
during the sedulously lowered glance. How
futilcly he had labored to express the character
of that face in clay, and, while catching it in
substance, had yet lost something that was es-
ntial !
That evening, at dusk, in the stress of writing
»95
THE WELL-BELOVED
letters, he sent her out for stamps. She had
been absent some quarter of an hour when, sud-
denly drawing himself up from over his writing-
table, it flashed upon him that he had absolutely
forgotten her total ignorance of London.
The head post-office, to which he had sent
her because it was late, was two or three streets
off, and he had made his request in the most
general manner, which she had acceded to
with alacrity enough. How could he have
done such an unreflecting thing?
Pierston went to the window. It was about
nine o'clock, and owing to her absence the
blinds were not down. He opened the case-
ment and stepped out upon the balcony. The
green shade of his lamp screened its rays from
the gloom without. Over the opposite square
the moon hung, and to the right there stretched
a long street, filled with a diminishing array of
lamps, some single, some in clusters, among
them an occasional blue or red one. From a
corner came the notes of a piano-organ strum-
ming out a stirring march of Rossini's. The
shadowy black figures of pedestrians moved
up, down, and across the embrowned roadway.
Above the roofs was a bank of livid mist, and
higher a greenish-blue sky, in which stars were
X96
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
visible, though its lower part was still pale with
daylight, against which rose chimney-pots in
the form of elbows, prongs, and fists.
From the whole scene proceeded a ground
rumble, miles in extent, upon which individual
rattles, voices, a tin whistle, the bark of a dog,
rode like bubbles on a sea. The whole noise
impressed him with the sense that no one in
its enormous mass ever required rest.
In this illimitable ocean of humanity there
was a unit of existence, his Avice, wandering
alone.
Pierston looked at his watch. She had been
gone half an hour. It was impossible to dis-
tinguish her at this distance, even if she ap-
proached. He came inside, and, putting on his
hat, determined to go out and seek her. He
reached the end of the street, and there was
nothing of her to be seen. She had the option
of two or three routes from this point to the
post-office; yet he plunged at random into one,
till he reached the office, to find it quite de-
serted. Almost distracted now by his anxiety
for her, he retreated as rapidly as he had come,
regaining home only to find that she had not
returned.
He recollected telling her that if she should
197
THE WELL-BELOVED
ever lose her way she must call a cab and drive
home. It occurred to him that this was what
she would do now. He again went out upon
the balcony; the dignified street in which he
lived was almost vacant, and the lamps stood
like placed sentinels awaiting some procession
which tarried long. At a point under him
where the road was torn up there stood a red
light, and at the corner two men were talking
in leisurely repose, as if sunning themselves at
noonday. Lovers of a feline disposition, who
were never seen by daylight, joked and darted
at each other in and out of area gates.
His attention was fixed on the cabs, and he
held his breath as the hollow clap of each
horse's hoofs drew near the front of the house
only to go onward into the square. The two
lamps of each vehicle afar dilated with its near
approach, and seemed to swerve towards him.
It was Avice surely ? No, it passed by.
Almost frantic, he again descended and let
himself out of the house, moving towards a
more central part, where the roar still con-
tinued. Before emerging into the noisy thor-
oughfare he observed a small figure approach-
ing leisurely along the opposite side, and hast-
ened across to find it was she.
198
XII
A GRILLE DESCENDS BETWEEN
" Oh, Avice !" he cried, with the tenderly
subdued scolding of a mother. " What is this
you have done to alarm me so ?"
She seemed unconscious of having done any-
thing, and was altogether surprised at his
anxiety. In his relief he did not speak further
till he asked her suddenly if she would take
his arm, since she must be tired.
" Oh no, sir," she assured him, " I am not a
bit tired, and I don't require any help at all,
thank you!"
They went up-stairs without using the lift,
and he let her and himself in with his latch-key.
She entered the kitchen, and he, following, sat
down in a chair there.
" Where have you been?" he said, with aL-
most angered concern on his face. " You ought
not to have been absent more than ten min-
utes."
o 199
THE WELL-BELOVED
" I knew there was nothing for me to do,
and thought I should like to see a little of
London," she replied, naively. " So when I
had got the stamps I went on into the fashion-
able streets, where folks are all walking about
just as if it were daytime ! 'Twas for all the
world like coming home by night from Mar-
tinmas Fair at the Street o' Wells, only more
genteel!"
" Oh, Avice, Avice, you must not go out like
this! Don't you know that I am responsible
for your safety? I am your — well, guardian,
in fact, and am bound by law and morals, and
I don't know what-all, to deliver you up to
your native island without a scratch or blem-
ish. And yet you indulge in such a mid-
night vagary as this !"
" But I am sure, sir, the people in the street
were more respectable than they are anywhere
at home! They were dressed in the latest
fashion, and would have scorned to do me any
harm ; and as to their love-making, I never
heard anything so polite before."
"Well, you must not do it again. I'll tell
you some day why. What's that you have in
your hand?"
"A mouse-trap. There are lots of mice in
200
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
this kitchen — sooty mice, not clean like ours —
and I thought I'd try to catch them. That
was what I went so far to buy, as there were
no shops open just about here. I'll set it now."
She proceeded at once to do so, and Pier-
ston remained in his seat regarding the opera-
tion which seemed entirely to engross her.
It was extraordinary, indeed, to observe how
she wilfully limited her interests ; with what
content she received the ordinary things that
life offered, and persistently refused to behold
what an infinitely extended life lay open to
her through him. If she had only said the
word he would have got a license and married
her the next morning. Was it possible that
she did not perceive this tendency in him ?
She could hardly be a woman if she did not ;
and in her airy, elusive, offhand demeanor she
was very much of a woman indeed.
" It only holds one mouse," he said, absently.
" But I shall hear it throw in the night, and
set it again."
lie sighed, and left her to her own resources
and retired to rest, though he felt no tendency
to sleep. At sonic small hour of the darkness,
owing, possibly, to some intervening door being
left open, h trd the mouse -trap click.
20 1
THE WELL-BELOVED
Another light sleeper must have heard it too,
for almost immediately after the pit-pat of
naked feet, accompanied by the brushing of
drapery, was audible along the passage tow-
ards the kitchen. After her absence in that
apartment long enougn to reset the trap, he
was startled by a scream from the same quar-
ter. Pierston sprang out of bed, jumped into
his dressing-gown, and hastened in the direc-
tion of the cry.
Avice, barefooted and wrapped in a shawl,
was standing on a chair ; the mouse-trap lay on
the floor, the mouse running round and round
in its neighborhood.
" I was trying to take en out," said she, ex-
citedly, " and he got away from me !"
Pierston secured the mouse while she re-
mained standing on the chair. Then, having
set the trap anew, his feeling burst out, petu-
lantly :
" A girl like you to throw yourself away
upon such a commonplace fellow as that quar-
ryman ! Why do you do it ?"
Her mind was so intently fixed upon the
matter in hand that it was some moments be-
fore she caught his irrelevant subject. " Be-
cause I am a foolish girl," she said, quietly.
202
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
" What ! Don't you love him ?" said Joce-
lyn, with a surprised stare up at her as she
stood, in her concern appearing the very Avice
who had kissed him twenty years earlier.
" It is not much use to talk about that,"
said she.
"Then is it the soldier?"
" Yes, though I have never spoken to him."
" Never spoken to the soldier?"
" Never."
"Has either one treated you badly — de-
ceived you?"
" No. Certainly not."
" Well, I can't make you out ; and I don't
wish to know more than you choose to tell
me. Come, Avice, why not tell me exactly
how things are ?"
"Not now, sir!" she said, her pretty pink
face and brown eyes turned in simple appeal
to him from her pedestal. " I will tell you all
to-morrow ; an' that I will !"
He retreated to his own room and lay down
meditating. Some quarter of an hour after
she had retreated to hers the mouse - trap
clicked again, ami Pierston raised himself on
his elbow to listen. The place was so still and
the jerry-built door-panels so thin that he could
203
THE WELL-BELOVED
hear the mouse jumping about inside the wires
of the trap. But he heard no footstep this
time. As he was wakeful and restless he again
arose, proceeded to the kitchen with a light,
and, removing the mouse, reset the trap. Re-
turning he listened once more. He could see
in the far distance the door of Avice's room ;
but that thoughtful housewife had not heard
the second capture. From the room came a
soft breathing like that of an infant.
He entered his own chamber and reclined
himself gloomily enough. Her lack of all
consciousness of him, the aspect of the de-
serted kitchen, the cold grate, impressed him
with a deeper sense of loneliness than he had
ever felt before.
Foolish he was, indeed, to be so devoted to
this young woman. Her defencelessness, her
freedom from the least thought that there
lurked a danger in their propinquity, were in
fact secondary safeguards, not much less strong
than that of her being her mother's image,
against risk to her from him. Yet it was out
of this that his depression came.
At sight of her the next morning Pierston
felt that he must put an end to such a state of
things. He sent Avice off to the studio, wrote
204
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
to an agent for a couple of servants, and then
went round to his work. Avice was busy
righting all that she was allowed to touch. It
was the girl's delight to be occupied among
the models and casts, which for the first time
she regarded with the wistful interest of a soul
struggling to receive ideas of beauty vaguely
discerned yet ever eluding her. That bright-
ness in her mother's mind which might have
descended to the second Avice with the ma-
ternal face and form had been dimmed by ad-
mixture with the mediocrity of her father's;
and by one who remembered, like Pierston, the
dual organization, the opposites could be often
seen wrestling internally.
They were alone in the studio, and his feel-
ings found vent. Putting his arms round her
he said, " My darling, sweet little Avice ! I
want to ask you something — surely you guess
what ? I want you to know this : will you be
married to me, and live here with me always
and ever ?"
"Oh, Mr. Pierston, what nonsense!"
"Nonsense?" said he, shrinking somewhat.
"Yes, sir."
" Well, why ? Am I too old ? Surely there's
no serious difference?"
205
THE WELL-BELOVED
" Oh no — I should not mind that if it came
to marrying. The difference is not much for
husband and wife, though it is rather much for
keeping company."
She struggled to get free, and when in the
movement she knocked down the Empress
Faustina's head he did not try to retain her.
He saw that she was not only surprised, but a
little alarmed.
" You haven't said why it is nonsense !" he
remarked, tartly.
" Why, I didn't know you was thinking of
me like that. I hadn't any thought of it.
And all alone here ! What shall I do?"
" Say yes, my pretty Avice! We'll then go
out and be married at once, and nobody be
any the wiser."
She shook her head. " I couldn't, sir."
" It would be well for you. You don't like
me, perhaps?"
"Yes, I do — very much. But not in that
sort of way — quite. Still, I might have got to
love you in time, if — "
" Well, then, try," he said, warmly. "Your
mother did !"
No sooner had the words slipped out than
Pierston would have recalled them. He had
206
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
felt in a moment that they jeopardized his
cause.
" Mother loved you ?" said Avice, incredu-
lously gazing at him.
"Yes," he murmured.
"You were not her false young man, sure-
ly? That one who — "
" Yes, yes ! Say no more about it."
" Who ran away from her?"
"Almost."
" Then I can never, never like you again !
I didn't know it was a gentleman — I — I
thought — "
" It wasn't a gentleman, then."
" Oh, sir, please go away ! I can't bear the
sight of 'ee at this moment ! Perhaps I shall
get to — to like you as I did; but — "
" No ; I'm d — d if I'll go away !" said Pier-
ston, thoroughly irritated. " I have been can-
did with you ; you ought to be the same with
me!"
" What do you want me to tell?"
" Enough to make it clear to me why you
don't accept this offer. Everything you have
said yet is a reason for the reverse. Now, my
dear, I am not angry."
" Yes, you arc."
207
THE WELL-BELOVED
" No, I'm not. Now, what is your reason ?"
"The name of it is Isaac Pierston, down
home."
"How?"
" I mean he courted me, and led me on to
island custom, and then I went to chapel one
morning and married him in secret, because
mother didn't care about him ; and I didn't
either by that time. And then he quarrelled
with me ; and just before you and I came to
London he went away to Guernsey. Then I
saw a soldier; I never knew his name, but I
fell in love with him because I am so quick at
that ! Still, as it was wrong, I tried not to
think of him, and wouldn't look at him when
he passed. But it made me cry very much
that I mustn't. I was then very miserable,
and you asked me to come to London. I
didn't care what I did with myself, and I
came."
" Heaven above us 1" said Pierston, his pale
and distressed face showing with what a shock
this announcement had come. " Why have
you done such extraordinary things? Or,
rather, why didn't you tell me of this before ?
Then, at the present moment you are the wife
of a man who is in Guernsey, whom you do
208
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
not love at all, but instead of him love a sol-
dier whom you have never spoken to, while I
have nearly brought scandal upon us both by
your letting me love you. Really, you are a
very wicked woman!"
"No, I am not!" she pouted.
Still, Avice looked pale and rather fright-
ened, and did not lift her eyes from the floor.
" I said it was nonsense in you to want to
have me !" she went on, " and even if I hadn't
been married to that horrid Isaac Pierston I
couldn't have married you after you told me
that you was the man who ran away from my
mother."
" I have paid the penalty !" he said, sadly.
" Men of my sort always get the worst of it
somehow. Now, Avice — I'll call you dear
Avice for your mother's sake and not for your
own — I must see what I can do to help you
out of the difficulty that unquestionably you
arc in. Why can't you love your husband,
now you have married him ?"
Avice looked aside at the statuary as if the
subtleties of her organization were not very
y to define.
u Was he that black-bearded typical local
character I saw you walking with one Sun-
o 209
THE WELL-BELOVED
day? The same surname as mine; though,
of course, you don't notice that in a place
where there are only half a dozen surnames?"
" Yes, that was Ike. It was that evening we
disagreed. He scolded me again, and I an-
swered him, and the next day he went away."
"Well, as I say, I must consider what it will
be best to do for you in this. The first thing,
it seems to me, will be to get your husband
home."
She impatiently shrugged her shoulders.
" I don't like him !"
" Then why did you marry him ?"
" I was obliged to, after we'd proved each
other."
"You shouldn't have thought of such a
thing. It is ridiculous, and out of date nowa-
days."
"Ah, he's so old-fashioned in his notions
that he doesn't think like that. However,
he's gone."
" Ah — it is only a tiff between you, I dare
say. I'll start him in business if he'll come.
. . . Is the cottage at home still in your
hands?"
"Yes, it is my freehold. Gammer Stock-
wool is taking care o' it for me."
2IO
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
" Good. And back there you go straight-
way, my pretty madam, and wait till your
husband comes to make it up with you."
" I won't go ! I don't want him to come !"
she sobbed. I want to stay here, or anywhere,
except where he can come !"
" You will get over that. Now go back to
the flat, there's a dear Avice, and be ready in
one hour, waiting in the hall for me."
" I don't want to !"
" But I say you shall !"
She found it was no use to disobey. Pre-
cisely at the moment appointed he met her
there himself, burdened only with a valise
and umbrella, she with a box and other things.
Directing the porter to put Avice and her
belongings into a four-wheeled cab for the
railway station, he walked out of the door,
and kept looking behind till he saw the cab
approaching. He then entered beside the
astonished girl, and onward they went to-
gether.
They sat opposite each other in an empty
compartment, and the tedious railway journey
m. Regarding her closely now by the
light of her revelation he wondered at himself
for never divining her secret. Whenever he
21 I
THE WELL-BELOVED
looked at her the girl's eyes grew rebellious,
and at last she wept.
" I don't want to go to him !" she sobbed, in
a repressed voice.
Pierston was almost as much distressed as
she. "Why did you put yourself and me in
such a position?" he said, bitterly. " It is no
use to regret it now ! And I can't say that I
do. It affords me a way out of a trying posi-
tion. Even if you had not been married to
him you would not have married me !"
" Yes, I would, sir."
" What ! You would ? You said you
wouldn't not long ago."
" I like you better now ! I like you more
and more!"
Pierston sighed, for emotionally he was not
much older than she. That hitch in his devel-
opment, rendering him the most lopsided of
God's creatures, was his standing misfortune.
A proposal to her which crossed his mind was
dismissed as disloyalty, particularly to an inex-
perienced fellow-islander and one who was by
race and traditions almost a kinswoman.
Little more passed between the twain on
that wretched, never-to-be-forgotten day.
Aphrodite, Ashtaroth, Freyja, or whoever the
212
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
love -queen of his isle might have been, was
punishing him sharply, as she knew but too
well how to punish her votaries when they
reverted from the ephemeral to the stable
mood. When was it to end — this curse of
his heart not aging while his frame moved
naturally onward ? Perhaps only with life.
His first act the day after depositing her in
her own house was to go to the chapel where,
by her statement, the marriage had been sol-
emnized, and make sure of the fact. Perhaps
he felt an illogical hope that she might be
free, even then, in the tarnished condition
which such freedom would have involved.
However, there stood the words distinctly :
Isaac Pierston, Ann Avice Caro, son and
daughter of So-and-so, married on such a day,
signed by the contracting parties, the offici-
ating minister, and the two witnesses.
XIII
SHE IS ENSHROUDED FROM SIGHT
ONE evening in early winter, when the air
was dry and gusty, the dark little lane which
divided the grounds of Sylvania Castle from
the cottage of Avice, and led down to the ad-
joining ruin of Red King's castle, was paced
by a solitary man. The cottage was the centre
of his beat ; its western limit being the gates
of the former residence, its eastern the draw-
bridge of the ruin. The few other cottages
thereabout — all as if carved from the solid
rock — were in darkness, but from the upper
window of Avice's tiny freehold glimmered a
light. Its rays were repeated from the far-
distant sea by the light-ship lying moored over
the mysterious Shambles quicksand, which
brought tamelessness and domesticity into due
position as balanced opposites.
The sea moaned — more than moaned —
among the boulders below the ruins, a throe
214
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
of its tide being timed to regular intervals.
These sounds were accompanied by an equally
periodic moan from the interior of the cottage
chamber ; so that the articulate heave of wa-
ter and the articulate heave of life seemed
but differing utterances of the self-same trou-
bled terrestrial Being — which in one sense
they were.
Pierston — for the man in the lane was he —
would look from light-ship to cottage window ;
then back again, as he waited there between
the travail of the sea without and the travail
of the woman within. Soon an infant's wail
of the very feeblest was also audible in the
house. He started from his easy pacing and
went again westward, standing at the elbow
of the lane a long time. Then the peace of
the sleeping village which lay that way was
broken by light wheels and the trot of a horse.
Pierston went back to the cottage gate and
awaited the arrival of the vehicle.
It was a light cart, and a man jumped down
as it stopped. He was in a broad -brimmed
hat, under which no more of him could be
perceived than that he wore a black beard
clipped like a yew fence — a typical aspect in
the island.
' 215
THE WELL-BELOVED
" You are Avice's husband ?" asked the
sculptor, quickly.
The man replied that he was, in the local
accent. " I've just come in by to-day's boat,"
he added. " I couldn't git here avore. I had
contracted for the job at Peter-Port, and had
to see to't to the end."
"Well," said Pierston, "your coming means
that you are willing to make it up with her?"
"Ay, I don't know but I be," said the
man. " Mid so well do that as anything
else !"
" If you do, thoroughly, a good business in
your old line awaits you here in the island."
" Wi' all my heart, then," said the man.
His voice was energetic, and, though slightly
touchy, it showed, on the whole, a disposition
to set things right.
The driver of the trap was paid off, and
Jocelyn and Isaac Pierston — undoubtedly sci-
ons of a common stock in this isle of inter-
marriages, though they had no proof of it —
entered the house. Nobody was in the
ground -floor room, in the centre of which
stood a square table, in the centre of the ta-
ble a little wool mat, and in the centre of the
mat a lamp, the apartment having the appear-
216
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
ance of being rigidly swept and set in order
for an event of interest.
The woman who lived in the house with
Avice now came down-stairs, and to the inquiry
of the comers she replied that matters were
progressing favorably, but that nobody could
be allowed to go up-stairs just then. After
placing chairs and viands for them she re-
treated, and they sat down, the lamp between
them — the lover of the sufferer above, who had
no right to her, and the man who had every
right to her, but did not love her. Engag-
ing in desultory and fragmentary conversa-
tion, they listened to the trampling of feet on
the floor-boards overhead — Pierston full of anx-
iety and attentiveness, Ike awaiting the course
of nature calmly.
Soon they heard the feeble bleats repeated,
and then the local practitioner descended and
entered the room.
" How is she now?" said Pierston, the more
taciturn Ike looking up with him for the an-
swer that he felt would serve for two as well as
for one.
" Doing well — remarkably well," replied the
professional gentleman, with a manner of hav-
ing said it in other places; and, his vehicle not
217
THE WELL-BELOVED
being at the door, he sat down and shared
some refreshment with the others. When he
had departed Mrs. Stockwool again stepped
down and informed them that Ike's presence
had been made known to his wife.
The truant quarrier seemed rather inclined
to stay where he was and finish the mug of
ale, but Pierston quickened him, and he as-
cended the staircase. As soon as the lower
room was empty Pierston leaned with his el-
bows on the table and covered his face with
his hands.
Ike was absent no great time. Descending
with a proprietary mien that had been lacking
before, he invited Jocelyn to ascend likewise,
since she had stated that she would like to see
him. Jocelyn went up the crooked old steps,
the husband remaining below.
Avice, though white as the sheets, looked
brighter and happier than he had expected to
find her, and was apparently very much forti-
fied by the pink little lump at her side. She
held out her hand to him.
" I just wanted to tell 'ee," she said, striving
against her feebleness, " I thought it would be
no harm to see you, though 'tis rather soon —
to tell 'ee how very much I thank you for get-
218
A YOUNG MAN OF FORTY
ting me settled again with Ike. He is very
glad to come home again, too, he says. Yes,
you've done a good many kind things for me,
sir.
Whether she were really glad, or whether the
words were expressed as a matter of duty,
Pierston did not attempt to learn.
He merely said that he valued her thanks.
" Now, Avice," he added, tenderly, " I resign
my guardianship of you. I hope to see your
husband in a sound little business here in a very
short time."
" I hope so — for baby's sake," she said, with
a bright sigh. " Would you — like to see her,
sir?
11 The baby? Oh yes . . . your baby ! You
must christen her Avice."
" Yes — so I will!" she murmured, readily,
and disclosed the infant with some timidity.
" I hope you forgive me, sir, for concealing my
thoughtless marriage !"
" If you forgive me for making love to
»»
you.
11 Yes. How were you to know ! I wish — "
Pierston bade her good-bye, kissing her
hand; turned from her and the incipient being,
whom he was to meet again under very altered
2Kj
THE WELL-BELOVED
conditions, and left the bedchamber with a
tear in his eye.
" Here endeth that dream !" said he.
Hymen, in secret or overt guise, seemed to
haunt Pierston just at this time with undigni-
fied mockery, which savored rather of Harle-
quin than of the torch-bearer. Two days after
parting in a lone island from the girl he had
so disinterestedly loved he met in Piccadilly
his friend Somers, wonderfully spruced up, and
hastening along with a preoccupied face.
"My dear fellow," said Somers, "what do
you think ! I was charged not to tell you,
but, hang it ! I may just as well make a clean
breast of it now as later!"
" What — you are not going to . . ." began
Pierston, with divination.
" Yes. What I said on impulse six months
back I am about to carry out in cold blood.
Nichola and I began in jest and ended in
earnest. We are going to take one another
next month for good and all."
PART THIRD
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
11 In me thou seest the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie
As the death-bed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by."
— Shakespeare.
SHE RETURNS FOR THE NEW SEASON
Twenty years had spread their films over
the events which wound up with the reunion
of the second Avice and her husband, and the
hoary peninsula called an island looked just
the same as before ; though many who had
formerly projected their daily shadows upon
its unrelieved summer whiteness ceased now
to disturb the colorless sunlight there.
The general change, nevertheless, was small.
The silent ships came and went from the
wharf, the chisels clinked in the quarries ; file
after file of whity-brown horses, in strings of
eight or ten, painfully dragged down the hill
the square blocks of stone on the antediluvian
wooden wheels just as usual. The light-ship
winked every night from the quicksands to the
Beal Lantern, and the Beal Lantern glared
through its eye-glass on the ship. The canine
gnawing audible on the Pebble-bank had been
2 -' ')
THE WELL-BELOVED
repeated ever since at each tide, but the peb-
bles remained undevoured.
Men drank, smoked, and spat in the inns
with only a little more adulteration in their
refreshments and a trifle less dialect in their
speech than of yore. But one figure had
never been seen on the Channel rock in the
interval — the form of Pierston the sculptor,
whose first use of the chisel that rock had in-
stigated.
He had lived abroad a great deal, and, in
fact, at this very date he was staying at a
hotel in Rome. Though he had not once set
eyes on Avice since parting from her in the
room with her first-born, he had managed to
obtain tidings of her from time to time during
the interval. In this way Pierston learned
that, shortly after their resumption of a com-
mon life in her house, Ike had ill-used her, till,
fortunately, the business to which Jocelyn
had assisted him chancing to prosper, he be-
came immersed in its details, and allowed
Avice to pursue her household courses without
interference, initiating that kind of domestic
reconciliation which is so calm and durable,
having as its chief ingredient neither hate nor
love, but an all-embracing indifference.
224
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
At first Pierston had sent her sums of
money privately, fearing lest her husband
should deny her material comforts ; but he
soon found, to his great relief, that such help
was unnecessary, social ambition prompting
Ike to set up as quite a gentleman-islander
and to allow Avice a scope for show which he
would never have allowed in mere kindness.
Being in Rome, as aforesaid, Pierston re-
turned one evening to his hotel to dine, after
spending the afternoon among the busts in
the long gallery of the Vatican. The uncon-
scious habit, common to so many people, of
tracing likes in unlikes had often led him to
discern, or to fancy he discerned, in the Ro-
man atmosphere, in its lights and shades, and
particularly in its reflected or secondary lights,
something resembling the atmosphere of his
native promontory. Perhaps it was that in
each case the eye was mostly resting on stone
— that the quarries of ruins in the Eternal
City reminded him of the quarries of maiden
rock at home.
This being in his mind when he sat down to
dinner at the common table, he was surprised
to hear an American gentleman who sat op-
posite mention the name of Pierston's birth-
p 225
THE WELL-BELOVED
place. The American was talking to a friend
about a lady — an English widow, whose ac-
quaintance they had renewed somewhere in
the Channel Islands during a recent tour, af-
ter having known her as a young woman who
came to San Francisco with her father and
mother many years before. Her father was
then a rich man, just retired from the business
of a stone-merchant in England ; but he had
engaged in large speculations, and had lost
nearly all his fortune. Jocelyn further gath-
ered that the widowed daughter's name was
Mrs. Leverre ; that she had a stepson — her
husband having been a Jersey gentleman, a
widower — and that the stepson seemed to be
a promising and interesting young man.
Pierston was instantly struck with the per-
ception that these and other allusions, though
general, were in accord with the history of his
long-lost Marcia. He hardly felt any desire to
hunt her up after nearly two- score years of
separation, but he was impressed enough to
resolve to exchange a word with the strangers
as soon as he could get opportunity.
He could not well attract their attention
through the plants upon the wide table, and,
even if he had been able, he was disinclined to
226
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
ask questions in public. He waited on till
dinner was over, and when the strangers with-
drew Pierston withdrew in their rear.
They were not in the drawing-room, and he
found that they had gone out. There was no
chance of overtaking them, but Pierston, waked
to restlessness by their remarks, wandered up
and down the adjoining Piazza di Spagna,
thinking they might return. The streets be-
low were immersed in shade, the front of the
church at the top was flooded with orange
light, the gloom of evening gradually intensi-
fying upon the broad, long flight of steps,
which foot-passengers incessantly ascended and
descended with the insignificance of ants; the
dusk wrapped up the house to the left, in which
Shelley had lived, and that to the right, in
which Keats had died.
Getting back to the hotel, he learned that the
Americans had only dropped in to dine, and
were- staying elsewhere. Me saw no more of
them ; and on reflection he was not deeply
concerned, for what earthly woman, going <»ff
in a freak as Marcia had done, and keeping
Silence 50 long, would care for a belated friend-
ship with him, now in the s< n if he were
to take the trouble to discover hei
227
THE WELL-BELOVED
Thus much Marcia. The other thread of his
connection with the ancient Isle of Slingers
was stirred by a letter he received from Avice
a little after this date, in which she stated that
her husband Ike had been killed in his own
quarry by an accident within the past year;
that she herself had been ill, and though
well again, and left amply provided for, she
would like to see him if he ever came that
way.
As she had not communicated for several
long years, her expressed wish to see him now
was likely to be prompted by something more,
something newer, than memories of him. Yet
the manner of her writing precluded all sus-
picion that she was thinking of him as an old
lover whose suit events had now made practi-
cable. He told her he was sorry to hear that
she had been ill, and that he would certainly
take an early opportunity of going down to
her home on his next visit to England.
He did more. Her request had revived
thoughts of his old home and its associations,
and instead of awaiting other reasons for a re-
turn he made her the operating one. About
a week later he stood once again at the foot
of the familiar steep whereon the houses at the
228
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
entrance to the isle were perched like gray
pigeons on a roof-side.
At Top-o'-Hill — as the summit of the rock
was mostly called — he stood looking at the
busy doings in the quarries beyond, where the
numerous black hoisting-cranes scattered over
the central plateau had the appearance of a
swarm of crane-flies resting there. He went a
little farther, made some general inquiries
about the accident which had carried off
Avice's husband in the previous year, and
learned that, though now a widow, she had
plenty of friends and sympathizers about her,
which rendered any immediate attention to
her on his part unnecessary. Considering,
therefore, that there was no great reason why
he should call on her so soon, and without
warning, he turned back. Perhaps, after all,
her request had been dictated by a momentary
feeling only, and a considerable strangeness to
each other must naturally be the result of a
score of dividing years. Descending to the
bottom, he took his seat in the train on the
shore, which soon carried him along the Bank
and round to the watering-place five miles off,
at which he had taken up his quarters for a
few days.
229
THE WELL-BELOVED
Here, as he stayed on, his local interests re-
vived. Whenever he went out he could see
the island that was once his home lying like
a great snail upon the sea across the bay. It
was the spring of the year ; local steamers had
begun to run, and he was never tired of stand-
ing on the thinly occupied deck of one of these
as it skirted the island and revealed to him on
the cliffs far up its height the ruins of Red
King's castle, behind which the little village
of East Quarriers lay.
Thus matters went on, if they did not rather
stand still, for several days before Pierston re-
deemed his vague promise to seek Avice out.
And in the meantime he was surprised by the
arrival of another letter from her by a round-
about route. She had heard, she said, that he
had been on the island, and imagined him
therefore to be staying somewhere near. Why
did he not call, as he had told her he would
do? She was always thinking of him and
wishing to see him.
Her tone was anxious, and there was no
doubt that she really had something to say
which she did not wish to write. He won-
dered what it could be, and started the same
afternoon.
230
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
Avice, who had been little in his mind of
late years, began to renew for herself a dis-
tinct position therein. He was fully aware
that since his earlier manhood a change had
come over his regard of womankind. Once
the individual had been nothing more to him
than the temporary abiding-place of the typi-
cal or ideal ; now his heart showed its bent to
be a growing fidelity to the specimen, with all
her pathetic flaws of detail ; which flaws, so
far from sending him farther, increased his
tenderness. This maturer feeling, if finer and
higher, was less convenient than the old. Ar-
dors of passion could be felt as in youth with-
out the recuperative intervals which had ac-
companied evanescence.
The first sensation was to find that she had
long ceased to live in the little freehold cot-
tage she had occupied of old. In answer to
his inquiries he was directed along the road to
the wrest of the modern castle, past the en-
trance on that side, and onward to the very
house that had once been his own home.
There it stood, as of yore, facing up the Chan-
nel, a comfortable room)- structure, the euony-
mus and other shrubs, which alone would
stand in the teeth of the salt wind, living on
o 231
THE WELL-BELOVED
at about the same stature in front of it, but
the paint-work much renewed. A thriving
man had resided there of late, evidently.
The widow in mourning who received him
in the front parlor was, alas ! but the sorry
shadow of Avice the Second. How could he
have fancied otherwise after twenty years?
Yet he had been led to fancy otherwise, al-
most without knowing it, by feeling himself
unaltered. Indeed, curiously enough, nearly
the first words she said to him were, " Why,
you are just the same !"
" Just the same. Yes, I am, Avice," he an-
swered, sadly ; for this inability to ossify with
the rest of his generation threw him out of pro-
portion with the time. Moreover, while wear-
ing the aspect of comedy, it was of the nature
of tragedy.
" It is well to be you, sir," she went on.
" I have had troubles to take the bloom off
me!"
" Yes ; I have been sorry for you."
She continued to regard him curiously, with
humorous interest ; and he knew what was
passing in her mind : that this man, to whom
she had formerly looked up as to a person far
in advance of her along the lane of life, seemed
232
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
now to be a well-adjusted contemporary, the
pair of them observing the world with fairly
level eyes.
He had come to her with warmth for a vis-
ion which, on reaching her, he found to have
departed ; and, though fairly weaned by the
natural reality, he was so far stanch as to lin-
ger hankeringly. They talked of past days —
his old attachment, which she had then de-
spised, being now far more absorbing and
present to her than to himself.
She unmistakably won upon him as he sat
on. A curious closeness between them had
been produced in his imagination by the dis-
covery that she was passing her life within
the house of his own childhood. Her similar
surname meant little here ; but it was also his,
and, added to the identity of domicile, lent a
strong suggestiveness to the accident.
" This is where I used to sit when my par-
ents occupied the house," he said, placing him-
self beside that corner of the fireplace which
commanded a view through the window. " I
could sec a bough of tamarisk wave outside at
that time, and, beyond the bough, the same
abrupt grassy waste towards the sea, and at
ht the same old light-ship blinking far out
233
THE WELL-BELOVED
there. Place yourself on the spot, to please
me."
She set her chair where he indicated, and
Pierston stood close beside her, directing her
gaze to the familiar objects he had regarded
thence as a boy. Her head and face — the lat-
ter thoughtful and worn enough, poor thing,
to suggest a married life none too comforta-
ble— were close to his breast, and with a few
inches further incline would have touched it.
"And now you are the inhabitant, I the
visitor," he said. " I am glad to see you here
— so glad, Avice ! You are fairly well pro-
vided for — I think I may assume that?" He
looked round the room at the solid mahogany
furniture and at the modern piano and show-
bookcase.
"Yes, Ike left me comfortable. 'Twas he
who thought of moving from my cottage to
this larger house. He bought it, and I can
live here as long as I choose to."
Apart from the decline of his adoration to
friendship, there seemed to be a general con-
vergence of positions which suggested that he
might make amends for the original desertion
by proposing to this Avice when a meet time
should arrive. If he did not love her as he
234
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
had done when she was a slim thing catching
mice in his rooms in London, he could surely
be content at his age with comradeship. Af-
ter all, she was only forty to his sixty. The
feeling that he really could be thus content
was so convincing that he almost believed the
luxury of getting old and reposeful was com-
ing to his restless, wandering heart at last.
" Well, you have come at last, sir," she went
on ; " and I am grateful to you. I did not like
writing, and yet I wanted to be straightfor-
ward. Have you guessed at all why I wished
to see you so much that I could not help send-
ing twice to you ?"
" I have tried, but cannot."
"Try again. It is a pretty reason, which I
hope you'll forgive."
" I am sure I sha'n't unriddle it. But I'll
say this on my own account before you tell
me : I have always taken a lingering interest
in you, which you must value for what it is
worth. It originated, so far as it concerns you
personally, with the sight of you in that cottage
round the corner, nineteen or twenty years
>, when I became tenant of the castle
opposite. But that was not the very begin-
ning. The very beginning was a score of years
235
THE WELL-BELOVED
before that, when I, a young fellow of one-and-
twenty, coming home here from London to
see my father, encountered a tender woman as
like you as your double ; was much attracted
by her, as I saw her day after day flit past this
window, till I made it my business to accom-
pany her in her walks awhile. I, as you know,
was not a stanch fellow, and it all ended bad-
ly. But, at any rate, her daughter and I are
friends."
"Ah, there she is!" suddenly exclaimed
Avice, whose attention had wandered some-
what from his retrospective discourse. She
was looking from the window towards the
cliffs, where, upon the open ground quite near
at hand, a slender female form was seen ram-
bling along. " She is out for a walk," Avice
continued. " I wonder if she is going to call
here this afternoon? She is living at the cas-
tle opposite as governess."
" Oh, she's—"
" Yes. Her education was very thorough —
better even than her grandmother's. I was
the neglected one, and Isaac and myself both
vowed that there should be no complaint on
that score about her. We christened her Avice,
to keep up the name, as you requested. I wish
236
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
you could speak to her ; I am sure you would
like her."
"Is that the baby?" faltered Jocelyn.
" Yes, the baby."
The person signified, now much nearer, was
a still more modernized, up-to-date edition of
the two Avices of that blood with whom he
had been involved more or less for the last
forty years. A ladylike creature was she —
almost elegant. She was altogether finer in
figure than her mother or grandmother had
ever been, which made her more of a woman
in appearance than in years. She wore a large-
disked sun-hat, with a brim like a wheel whose
spokes were radiating folds of muslin lining
the brim, a black margin beyond the muslin
being the felloe. Beneath this brim her hair
was massed low upon her brow, the color of
the thick tresses being obviously, from her
complexion, repeated in the irises of her large,
deep eyes. Her rather nervous lips were thin
and closed, so that they only appeared as a
delicate red line. A changeable temperament
\tfas shown by that mouth — quick transitions
from affection to aversion, from a pout to a
smile.
It was Avice the Third.
237
THE WELL-BELOVED
Jocelyn and the second Avice continued to
gaze ardently at her.
"Ah, she is not coming in now; she hasn't
time," murmured the mother, with some dis-
appointment. " Perhaps she means to run
across in the evening."
The tall girl, in fact, went past and on till
she was out of sight. Pierston stood as in a
dream. It was the very she, in all essential
particulars, and with an intensification of gen-
eral charm, who had kissed him forty years
before. When he turned his head from the
window his eyes fell again upon the inter-
mediate Avice at his side. Before but the relic
of the Well-Beloved, she had now become its
empty shrine. Warm friendship, indeed, he
felt for her; but whatever that might have
done towards the instauration of a former
dream was now hopelessly barred by the ri-
valry of the thing itself in the guise of a lin-
eal successor.
II
MISGIVINGS ON THE RE-EMBODIMENT
PlERSTON had been about to leave, but he
sat down again on being asked if he would
stay and have a cup of tea. He hardly knew
for a moment what he did ; a dim thought
that Avice — the renewed Avice — might come
into the house made his reseating himself an
act of spontaneity.
He forgot that twenty years earlier he had
called the now Mrs. Pierston an elf, a witch ;
and that lapse of time had probably not di-
minished the subtleties implied by those epi-
thets. He did not know that she had noted
every impression that her daughter had made
upon him.
How he contrived to attenuate and disperse
the rather tender personalities he had opened
up with the new Avice's mother, Pierston
never exactly defined. Perhaps she saw more
than he thought she saw — read something in
239
THE WELL-BELOVED
his face — knew that about his nature which he
gave her no credit for knowing. Anyhow, the
conversation took the form of a friendly gos-
sip from that minute, his remarks being often
given while his mind was turned elsewhere.
But a chill passed through Jocelyn when
there had been time for reflection. The re-
newed study of his art in Rome, without any
counterbalancing practical pursuit, had nour-
ished and developed his natural responsive-
ness to impressions ; he now felt that his old
trouble, his doom — his curse, indeed, he had
sometimes called it — was come back again.
His divinity was not yet propitiated for that
original sin against her image in the person of
Avice the First ; and now, at the age of one-
and- sixty, he was urged on and on like the
Jew Ahasuerus — or, in the phrase of the isl-
anders themselves, like a blind ram.
, The Goddess, an abstraction to the general,
was a fairly real personage to Pierston. He
had watched the marble images of her which
stood in his working-room, under all changes
of light and shade — in the brightening of
morning, in the blackening of eve, in moon-
light, in lamplight. Every line and curve of
her body none, naturally, knew better than
240
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
he ; and, though not a belief, it was, as has
been stated, a formula, a superstition, that the
three Avices were interpenetrated with her
essence.
" And the next Avice — your daughter," he
said, stumblingly ; " she is, you say, a govern-
ess at the castle opposite?"
Mrs. Pierston reaffirmed the fact, adding
that the girl often slept at home because she,
her mother, was so lonely. She often thought
she would like to keep her daughter at home
altogether.
" She plays that instrument, I suppose?"
said Pierston, regarding the piano.
"Yes, she plays beautifully; she had the
best instruction that masters could give her.
She was educated at Sandbourne."
" Which room does she call hers when at
home?" he asked, curiously.
" The little one over this."
It had been his own. "Strange," he mur-
mured.
He finished tea, and sat after tea, but the
youthful Avice did not arrive. With the
Avice present he conversed as the old friend
— no more. At last it grew dusk, and Pierston
could not find an excuse for staying longer.
141
THE WELL-BELOVED
" I hope to make the acquaintance — of
your daughter," he said, in leaving, knowing
that he might have added with predestinate
truth, "of my new tenderly: beloved."
"I hope you will," shejmswered. "This
evening she evidently has gone for a walk in-
stead of coming here."
" And, by -the -bye, you have not told me
what you especially wanted to see me for?"
"Ah, no. I will put it off."
" Very well. I don't pretend to guess."
" I must tell you another time."
" If it is any little business in connection
writh your late husband's affairs, do command
me. I'll do anything I can."
"Thank you. And I shall see you again
soon?
" Certainly. Quite soon."
When he was gone she looked reflectively
at the spot where he had been standing, and
said : " Best hold my tongue. It will work of
itself, without my telling."
Jocelyn went from the house, but as the
white road passed under his feet he felt in no
mood to get back to his lodgings in the town
on the mainland. He lingered about upon
the undulating ground for a long while, think-
242
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
ing of the extraordinary reproduction of the
original girl in this new form he had seen, and
of himself as of a foolish dreamer in being so
suddenly fascinated by the renewed image in
a personality not one -third his age. As a
physical fact, no doubt, the preservation of
the likeness was no uncommon thing here,
but it helped the dream.
Passing round the walls of the new castle,
he deviated from his homeward track by turn-
ing down the familiar little lane which led to
the ruined castle of the Red King. It took
him past the cottage in which the new Avice
was born, from whose precincts he had heard
her first infantine cry. Pausing, he saw near
the west, behind him, the new moon growing
distinct upon the glow.
He was subject to gigantic fantasies still.
In spite of himself, the sight of the new moon,
as representing one who, by her so-called in-
constancy, acted up to his own idea of a mi-
gratory Well-Beloved, made him Jeelas if his
wraith, in a changed sex, had suddenly looked
over the horizon at him. In a crowd secretly,
or in solitude boldly, he had often bowed the
knee three times to this sisterly divinity on
her first appearance monthly, and directed a
243
THE WELL-BELOVED
kiss towards her shining shape. The curse of
his qualities (if it were not a blessing) was far
from having spent itself yet.
In the other direction the castle ruins rose
square and dusky against the sea. He went
on towards these, around which he had played
as a boy, and stood by the walls at the edge
of the cliff pondering. There was no wind
and but little tide, and he thought he could
hear from years ago a voice that he knew. It
certainly was a voice, but it came from the
rocks beneath the castle ruin.
" Mrs. Atway !"
A silence followed, and nobody came. The
voice spoke again : " John Stoney !"
Neither was this summons attended to. The
cry continued, with more entreaty : " William
Scribben !"
The voice was that of a Pierston — there
could be no doubt of it — young Avice's, sure-
ly. Something or other seemed to be detain-
ing her down there against her will. A sloping
path beneath the beetling cliff and the castle
walls rising sheer from its summit led down
to the lower level whence the voice proceeded.
Pierston followed the pathway, and soon be-
held a girl in light clothing — the same he had
244
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
seen through the window — standing upon one
of the rocks, apparently unable to move. Pier-
ston hastened across to her.
" Oh, thank you for coming!" she murmured,
with some timidity. " I have met with an
awkward mishap. I live near here, and am
not frightened really. My foot has become
jammed in a crevice of the rock, and I can-
not get it out, try how I will. What shall
I do!"
Jocelyn stooped and examined the cause of
discomfiture. " I think if you can take your
boot off," he said, "your foot might slip out,
leaving the boot behind."
She tried to act upon this advice, but could
not do so effectually. Pierston then experi-
mented by slipping his hand into the crevice
till he could just reach the buttons of her boot,
which, however, he could not unfasten any
more than she. Taking his penknife from his
pocket, he tried again, and cut off the buttons
one by one. The boot unfastened, and out
slipped the foot.
11 Oh, how glad I am I" she cried, joyfully.
" I was fearing I should have to stay here all
night. How can I thank you enough ?"
He was tugging to withdraw the boot, but
245
THE WELL-BELOVED
no force that he could exercise would move it.
At last she said : " Don't try any longer. It
is not far to the house. I can walk in my
stocking."
" I'll assist you in," he said.
She said she did not want help, nevertheless
allowed him to help her on the unshod side.
As they moved on she explained that she had
come out through the garden door; had been
standing on the boulders to look at something
out at sea, just discernible in the evening light
as assisted by the moon, and, in jumping down,
had wedged her foot as he had found it.
Whatever Pierston's years might have made
him look by day, in the dusk of evening he
was fairly presentable as a pleasing man of no
marked antiquity, his outline differing but lit-
tle from what it had been when he was half
his years. He was well preserved, still up-
right, trimly shaven, agile in movement ; wore
a tightly buttoned suit, which set off a natu-
rally slight figure ; in brief, he might have been
of any age as he appeared to her at this mo-
ment. She talked to him with the coequality
of one who assumed him to be not far ahead
of her own generation ; and, as the growing
darkness obscured him more and more, he
246
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
adopted her assumption of his age with in-
creasing boldness of tone.
The flippant, harmless freedom of the water-
ing-place miss, which Avice had plainly ac-
quired during her sojourn at the Sandbourne
school, helped Pierston greatly in this role of
jeune premier which he was not unready to
play. Not a word did he say about being a
native of the island ; still more carefully did
he conceal the fact of his having courted her
grandmother and engaged himself to marry
that attractive lady.
He found that she had come out upon the
rocks through the same little private door from
the lawn of the modern castle which had fre-
quently afforded him egress to the same spot
in years long past. Pierston accompanied her
across the grounds almost to the entrance of
the mansion — the place being now far better
kept and planted than when he had rented it
as a lonely tenant ; almost, indeed, restored to
the order and neatness which had characterized
it when he was a boy.
Like her granny, she was too inexperienced
to be reserved, and during this little climb,
Upon his arm, there was time for a
great deal of confidence. When he had bidden
k 247
THE WELL-BELOVED
her farewell and she had entered, leaving him
in the dark, a rush of sadness through Pier-
ston's soul swept down all the temporary pleas-
ure he had found in the charming girl's com-
pany. Had Mephistopheles sprung from the
ground there and then with an offer to Jocelyn
of restoration to youth on the usual terms of
his firm, the sculptor might have consented to
sell a part of himself which he felt less imme-
diate need of than of a ruddy lip and cheek
and an unploughed brow.
But what could only have been treated as a
folly by outsiders was almost a sorrow for him.
Why was he born with such a temperament?
And this concatenated interest could hardly
have arisen, even with Pierston, but for a con-
flux of circumstances only possible here. The
three Avices, the second something like the
first, the third a glorification of the first, at all
events externally, were the outcome of the
immemorial island customs of intermarriage
and of prenuptial union, under which condi-
tions the type of feature was almost uniform
from parent to child through generations: so
that, till quite latterly, to have seen one native
man and woman was to have seen the whole
population of that isolated rock, so nearly cut
248
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
off from the mainland. His own predisposi-
tion and the sense of his early faithlessness did
all the rest.
He turned gloomily away, and let himself
out of the precincts. Before walking along the
couple of miles of road which would conduct
him to the little station on the shore, he rede-
scended to the rocks whereon he had found
her, and searched about for the fissure which
had made a prisoner of this terribly belated
edition of the Beloved. Kneeling down beside
the spot, he inserted his hand, and ultimately,
by much wriggling, withdrew the little boot.
He mused over it for a moment, put it in his
pocket, and followed the stony route to the
Street of Wells.
I
III
THE RENEWED IMAGE BURNS ITSELF IN
There was nothing to hinder Pierston in
calling upon the new Avice's mother as often
as he should choose, beyond the five miles of
intervening railway and additional mile or two
of clambering over the heights of the island.
Two days later, therefore, he repeated his jour-
ney and knocked about tea-time at the wid-
ow's door.
As he had feared, the daughter was not at
home. He sat down beside the old sweetheart
who, having eclipsed her mother in past days,
had now eclipsed herself in her child. Jocelyn
produced the girl's boot from his pocket.
" Then, 'tis you who helped Avice out of her
predicament ?" said Mrs. Pierston, with surprise.
" Yes, my dear friend ; and perhaps I shall
ask you to help me out of mine before I have
done. But never mind that now. What did
she tell you about the adventure ?"
250
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
Airs. Pierston was looking thoughtfully upon
him. " Well, 'tis rather strange it should have
been you, sir," she replied. She seemed to be
a good deal interested. " I thought it might
have been a younger man — a much younger
man."
" It might have been, as far as feelings were
concerned. . . . Now, Avice, I'll to the point
at once. Virtually, I have known your daugh-
ter any number of years. When I talk to her
I can anticipate every turn of her thought,
every sentiment, every act, so long did I
study those things in your mother and in
you. Therefore, I do not require to learn her;
she was learned by me in her previous exist-
ences. Now, don't be shocked ; I am willing
to marry her — I should be overjoyed to do it,
if there would be nothing preposterous about
it, or that would seem like a man making him-
self too much of a fool, and so degrading her
in consenting. I can make her comparatively
rich, as you know, and I would indulge her
every whim. There is the idea, bluntly put.
It would set right something in my mind that
ha been wrong for forty years. After my
death she would have plenty of freedom and
plenty of means to enjoy it."
251
THE WELL-BELOVED
Mrs. Isaac Pierston seemed only a little sur-
prised ; certainly not shocked.
"Well, if I didn't think you might be a bit
taken with her !" she said, with an arch sim-
plicity which could hardly be called unaf-
fected. " Knowing the set of your mind,
from my little time with you years ago, noth-
ing you could do in this way would astonish
me."
" But you don't think badly of me for it?"
" Not at all. . . . By-the-bye, did you ever
guess why I asked you to come? . . . But
never mind it now ; the matter is past. ... Of
course, it would depend upon what Avice felt.
. . . Perhaps she would rather marry a younger
man."
" And suppose a satisfactory younger man
should not appear?"
Mrs. Pierston showed in her face that she
fully recognized the difference between a rich
bird in hand and a young bird in the bush.
She looked him curiously up and down.
" I know you would make anybody a very
nice husband," she said. " I know that you
would be nicer than many men half your age ;
and, though there is a great deal of difference
between you and her, there have been more
252
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
unequal marriages, that's true. Speaking as
her mother, I can say that I shouldn't object
to you, sir, for her, provided she liked you.
That is where the difficulty will lie."
M I wish you would help me to get over that
difficulty," he said, gently. " Remember, I
brought back a truant husband to you twenty
years ago."
" Yes, you did," she assented, " and, though
I may say no great things as to happiness
came of it, I've always seen that your inten-
tions towards me were none the less noble on
that account. I would do for you what I
would do for no other man, and there is one
reason in particular which inclines me to help
you with Avice — that I should feel absolutely
certain I was helping her to a kind husband."
11 Well, that would remain to be seen. I
would, at any rate, try to be worthy of your
opinion. Come, Avice, for old times' sake,
you must help me. You never felt anything
but friendship in those days, you know, and
that makes it easy and proper for you to do
me a good turn now."
After a little more conversation his old
friend promised that she really would do
everything that lay in her power. She did
253
THE WELL-BELOVED
not say how simple she thought him not to
perceive that she had already, by writing to
him, been doing everything that lay in her
power ; had created the feeling which prompt-
ed his entreaty. And to show her good faith
in this promise she asked him to wait till later
in the evening, when Avice might possibly
run across to see her.
Pierston, who fancied he had won the
younger xA-vice's interest, at least, by the part
he had played upon the rocks the week be-
fore, had a dread of encountering her in full
light till he should have advanced a little fur-
ther in her regard. He accordingly was per-
plexed at this proposal, and, seeing his hesita-
tion, Mrs. Pierston suggested that they should
walk together in the direction whence Avice
would come, if she came at all.
He welcomed the idea, and in a few min-
utes they started, strolling along under the
now strong moonlight, and when they reached
the gates of Sylvania Castle turning back
again towards the house. After two or three
such walks up and down, the gate of the castle
grounds clicked, and a form came forth which
proved to be the expected one.
As soon as they met, the girl recognized in
254
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
her mother's companion the gentleman who
had helped her on the shore ; and she seemed
really glad to find that her chivalrous assistant
was claimed by her parent as an old friend.
She remembered hearing at divers times about
this worthy London man of talent and posi-
tion, whose ancestry were people of her own
isle, and possibly, from the name, of a com-
mon stock with her own.
"And you have actually lived in Sylvania
Castle yourself, Mr. Pierston?" asked Avice
the daughter, with her innocent young voice.
" Was it long ago ?"
"Yes, it was some time ago," replied the
sculptor, with a sinking at his heart lest she
should say how long.
" It must have been when I was away — c~
when I was very little."
" I don't think you were away."
u But I don't think I could have been here?"
" No, perhaps you couldn't have been here."
11 I think she was hiding herself in the pars-
ley-bed," said A vice's mother, blandly.
They talked in this general way till they
reached Mr-. Pi rston's house; but Jocelyn
resisted both the widow's invitation and the
desire of his own heart, and went away with-
THE WELL-BELOVED
out entering. To risk, by visibly confronting
her, the advantage that he had already gained,
or fancied he had gained, with the reincarnate
Avice required more courage than he could
claim in his present mood.
Such evening promenades as these were fre-
quent during the waxing of that summer
moon. On one occasion, as they were all
good walkers, it was arranged that they
should meet half way between the island and
the town in which Pierston had lodgings. It
was impossible that by this time the pretty
young governess should not have guessed the
ultimate reason of these rambles to be a mat-
rimonial intention ; but she inclined to the be-
lief that the widow, rather than herself, was the
object of Pierston's regard ; though why this
educated and apparently wealthy man should
be attracted by her mother — whose homeliness
was apparent enough to the girl's more mod-
ern training — she could not comprehend.
They met accordingly in the middle of the
Pebble-bank, Pierston coming from the main-
land, and the women from the peninsular
rock. Crossing the wooden bridge which
connected the bank with the shore proper,
256
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
they moved in the direction of Henry the
Eighth's Castle, on the verge of the ragstone
cliff. Like the Red King's castle on the
island, the interior was open to the sky, and
when they entered and the full moon streamed
down upon them over the edge of the enclos-
ing masonry, the whole present reality faded
from Jocelyn's mind under the press of mem-
ories. Neither of his companions guessed
what Pierston was thinking of. It was in this
very spot that he was to have met the grand-
mother of the girl at his side, and in which he
would have met her had she chosen to keep
the appointment ; a meeting which might —
nay, must — have changed the whole current
of his life.
Instead of that, forty years had passed —
forty years of severance from Avice, till a
secondly renewed copy of his sweetheart had
arisen to fill her place. But he, alas! was not
renewed. And of all this the pretty young
thing at his side knew nothing.
Taking advantage of the younger woman's
retreat to view the sea through an opening
of the walls, Pierston appealed to her mother
in a whisper: "Have you ever given her a
hint of what my meaning is? No? Then I
k 257
THE WELL-BELOVED
think you might, if you really have no ob-
jection."
Mrs. Pierston, as the widow, was far from
being so coldly disposed in her own person
towards her friend as in the days when he
wanted to marry her. Had she now been the
object of his wishes he would not have needed
to ask her twice. But like a good mother she
stifled all this, and said she would sound Avice
there and then.
" Avice, my dear," she said, advancing to
where the girl mused in the window -gap,
" what do you think of Mr. Pierston paying
his addresses to you — coming courting, as /
call it in my old-fashioned way? Supposing
he were to, would you encourage him ?"
" To me, mother?" said Avice, with an in-
quiring laugh. " I thought — he meant you !"
" Oh no, he doesn't mean me !" said her
mother, hastily. " He is nothing more than
my friend."
" I don't want any addresses," said the
daughter.
" He is a man in society, and would take
you to an elegant house in London, suited to
your education, instead of leaving you to
mope here."
258
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
" I should like that well enough," replied
Avice, carelessly.
" Then give him some encouragement."
" I don't care enough about him to do any
encouraging. It is his business, I should
think, to do all."
She spoke in her lightest vein ; but the result
was that when Pierston, who had discreetly
withdrawn, returned to them, she walked doc-
ilely, though perhaps gloomily, beside him,
her mother dropping to the rear. They came
to a rugged descent, and Pierston took her
hand to help her. She allowed him to retain
it when they arrived on level ground.
Altogether it was not an unsuccessful even-
ing for the man with the unanchored heart,
though possibly initial success meant worse
for him in the long run than initial failure.
There was nothing marvellous in the fact of
her tractability thus far. In his modern dress
and style, under the rays of the moon, he
looked a very presentable gentleman indeed,
while his knowledge of art and his travelled
manni ra were not without their attractions for
irl who with one hand touched the educated
middle class and with the other the rude and
simple inhabitants of the isle. Her intensely
THE WELL-BELOVED
modern sympathies were quickened by her
peculiar outlook.
Pierston would have regarded his interest in
her as overmuch selfish if there had not existed
a redeeming quality in the substratum of old
pathetic memory by which such love had been
created — which still permeated it, rendering it
the tenderest, most anxious, most protective
instinct he had ever known. It may have had
in its composition too much of the boyish
fervor that had characterized such affection
when he was cherry-cheeked and light in the
foot as a girl; but if it was all this feeling of
youth, it was more.
Mrs. Pierston, in fearing to be frank lest she
might seem to be angling for his fortune, did
not fully divine his cheerful readiness to offer
it, if by so doing he could make amends for
his infidelity to her family forty years back in
the past. Time had not made him mercenary,
and it had quenched his ambitions ; and though
his wish to wed Avice was not entirely a wish
to enrich her, the knowledge that she would
be enriched beyond anything that she could
have anticipated was what allowed him to in-
dulge his love.
He was not exactly old, he said to himself
260
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
the next morning as he beheld his face in the
glass. And he looked considerably younger
than he was. But there was history in his face
— distinct chapters of it ; his brow was not that
blank page it once had been. He knew the
origin of that line in his forehead; it had been
traced in the course of a month or two by past
troubles. He remembered the coming of this
pale wiry hair; it had been brought by the ill-
ness in Rome, when he had wished each
night that he might never wake again. This
wrinkled corner, that drawn bit of skin — they
had resulted from those months of despond-
ency when all seemed going against his art,
his strength, his happiness. " You cannot live
your life and keep it, Jocelyn," he said. Time
was against him and love, and time would
probably win.
"When I went away from the first Avice,"
he continued, with whimsical misery, " I had
a presentiment that I should ache for it some
day. And I am aching — have ached ever since
this jade of an Ideal learned the unconscion-
able trick of inhabiting one image only."
Upon the whole, he was not without a bode-
ment that it would be folly to press on.
261
IV
A DASH FOR THE LAST INCARNATION
THIS desultory courtship of a young girl,
which had been brought about by her mother's
contrivance, was interrupted by the appearance
of Somers and his wife and family on the Bud-
mouth Esplanade. Alfred Somers, once the
youthful, picturesque as his own paintings, was
now a middle-aged family man with spectacles
— spectacles worn, too, with the single object of
seeing through them — and a row of daughters
tailing off to infancy, who at present added
appreciably to the income of the bathing-
machine women established along the sands.
Mrs. Somers — once the intellectual, emanci-
pated Mrs. Pine-Avon — had now retrograded
to the petty and timid mental position of her
mother and grandmother, giving sharp, strict
regard to the current literature and art that
reached the innocent presence of her long per-
spective of girls, with the view of hiding every
262
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
skull and skeleton of life from their dear eyes.
She was another illustration of the rule that
succeeding generations of women are seldom
marked by cumulative progress, their advance
as girls being lost in their recession as matrons;
so that they move up and down the stream of
intellectual development like flotsam in a tidal
estuary. And this perhaps not by reason of
their faults as individuals, but of their misfort-
une as child-rearers.
The landscape-painter, now an Academician
like Pierston himself — rather popular than dis-
tinguished— had given up that peculiar and
personal taste in subjects which had marked
him in times past, executing instead many
pleasing aspects of nature addressed to the
furnishing householder through the middling
critic, and really very good of their kind. In
this way he received many large checks from
persons of wealth in England and America,
out of which he built himself a sumptuous
studio and an awkward house around it, and
paid for the education of the growing maid-
ens.
The vision of Somers's humble position as
jackal to this lion of a family and house and
studio and social reputation — Somers, to
8 263
THE WELL-BELOVED
whom strange conceits and wild imaginings
were departed joys never to return — led Pier-
ston, as the painter's contemporary, to feel
that he ought to be one of the bygones like-
wise, and to put on an air of unromantic buf-
ferism. He refrained from entering Avice's
peninsula for the whole fortnight of Somers's
stay in the neighboring town, although its
gray poetical outline — "throned along the
sea " — greeted his eyes every morn and eve
across the roadstead.
When the painter and his family had gone
back from their bathing holiday, he thought
that he, too, would leave the neighborhood.
To do so, however, without wishing at least
the elder Avice good-bye would be unfriendly,
considering the extent of their acquaintance.
One evening, knowing this time of day to suit
her best, he took the few minutes' journey to
the rock along the thin connecting string of
junction, and arrived at Mrs. Pierston's door
just after dark.
A light shone from an upper chamber. On
asking for his widowed acquaintance he was
informed that she was ill, seriously, though
not dangerously. While learning that her
daughter was with her, and further particu-
264
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
Iars, and doubting if he should go in, a mes-
sage was sent down to ask him to enter. His
voice had been heard, and Mrs. Pierston would
like to see him.
He could not with any humanity refuse, but
there flashed across his mind the recollection
that Avice the youngest had never yet really
seen him, had seen nothing more of him than
an outline, which might have appertained as
easily to a man thirty years his junior as to
himself, and a countenance so renovated by
faint moonlight as to fairly correspond. It was
with misgiving, therefore, that the sculptor
ascended the staircase and entered the little
upper sitting-room, now arranged as a sick-
chamber.
Mrs. Pierston reclined on a sofa, her face
emaciated to a surprising thinness for the
comparatively short interval since her attack.
" Come in, sir," she said, as soon as she saw
him, holding out her hand. " Don't let me
frighten you."
Avice was seated beside her, reading. The
girl jumped up, hardly seeming to recognize
him. u( )h, it's Mr. Pierston '." she said, in a mo-
ment, adding quickly, with evident surprise and
off her guard, " I thought Mr. Pier-ton was — "
265
THE WELL-BELOVED
What she had thought he was did not pass
her lips, and it remained a riddle for Jocelyn
until a new departure in her manner towards
him showed that the words "much younger"
would have accurately ended the sentence.
Had Pierston not now confronted her anew,
he might have endured philosophically her
changed opinion of him. But he was seeing
her again, and a rooted feeling was revived.
Pierston now learned for the first time that
the widow had been visited by sudden attacks
of this sort not infrequently of late years.
They were said to be due to angina pectoris,
the latter paroxysms having been the most
severe. She was at the present moment out
of pain, though weak, exhausted, and nervous.
She would not, however, converse about her-
self, but took advantage of her daughter's
absence from the room to broach the subject
most in her thoughts.
No compunctions had stirred her as they
had her visitor on the expediency of his suit
in view of his years. Her fever of anxiety lest,
after all, he should not come to see Avice again
had been not without an effect upon her health ;
and it made her more candid than she had in-
tended to be.
266
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
"Troubles and sickness raise all sorts of
fears, Mr. Pierston," she said. "What I felt
only a wish for, when you first named it, I have
hoped for a good deal since; and I have been
so anxious that — that it should come to some-
thing! I am glad indeed that you are come."
" My wanting to marry Avice, you mean,
dear Mrs. Pierston?"
" Yes — that's it. I wonder if you are still in
the same mind ? You are? Then I wish some-
thing could be done — to make her agree to it
— so as to get it settled. I dread otherwise
what will become of her. She is not a practi-
cal girl, as I was — she would hardly like now
to settle down as an islander's wife; and to
leave her living here alone would trouble
me.
"Nothing will happen to you yet, I hope,
my dear old friend."
"Well, it is a risky complaint; and the at-
tacks, when they come, are so agonizing that
to endure them I ought to get rid of all out-
side anxieties, folk say. Now — do you want
her, sir"""
"With all my soul! But she doesn't want
me.
" I don't think she is so against you as you
267
THE WELL-BELOVED
imagine. I fancy if it were put to her plainly,
now I am in this state, it might be done."
They lapsed into conversation on the early
days of their acquaintance, until Mrs. Pier-
ston's daughter re-entered the room.
" Avice," said her mother, when the girl had
been with them a few minutes. " About this
matter that I have talked over with you so
many times since my attack. Here is Mr.
Pierston, and he wishes to be your husband.
He is much older than you ; but, in spite of it,
that you will ever get a better husband I don't
believe. Now, will you take him, seeing the
state I am in, and how naturally anxious I am
to see you settled before I die?"
" But you won't die, mother ! You are get-
ting better!"
" Just for the present only. Come, he is a
good man and a clever man and a rich man.
I want you, oh, so much ! to be his wife. I
can say no more."
Avice looked appealingly at the sculptor
and then on the floor. " Does he really wish
me to ?" she asked, almost inaudibly, turning as
she spoke to Pierston. " He has never quite
said so to me."
" My dear one, how can you doubt it ?" said
268
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
Jocelyn, quickly. " But I won't press you to
marry me as a favor, against your feelings."
"I thought Mr. Pierston was younger!" she
murmured to her mother.
" That counts for little when you think how
much there is on the other side. Think of our
position, and of his — a sculptor, with a man-
sion, and a studio full of busts and statues that
I have dusted in my time, and of the beautiful
studies you would be able to take up. Surely
the life would just suit you ? Your expensive
education is wasted down here !"
Avice did not care to argue. She was out-
wardly gentle as her grandmother had been,
and it seemed just a question with her of
whether she must or must not. " Very well —
I feel I ought to agree to marry him, since
you tell me to," she answered, quietly, after
some thought. " I see that it would be a wise
thing to do, and that you wish it, and that Mr.
Pierston really does — like me. So — so that — "
Pierston was not backward at this critical
juncture, despite unpleasant sensations. But
it was the historic ingredient in this genealog-
ical passion — if its continuity through three
generations may be so described — which ap-
pealed to his perseverance at the expense of
269
THE WELL-BELOVED
his wisdom. The mother was holding the
daughter's hand ; she took Pierston's, and laid
Avice's in it.
No more was said in argument, and the
thing was regarded as determined. Afterwards
a noise was heard upon the window-panes, as
of fine sand thrown; and, lifting the blind,
Pierston saw that the distant light-ship winked
with a bleared and indistinct eye. A drizzling
rain had come on with the dark, and it was
striking the window in handfuls. He had in-
tended to walk the two miles back to the sta-
tion, but it meant a drenching to do it now.
He waited and had supper; and, finding the
weather no better, accepted Mrs. Pierston's in-
vitation to stay over the night.
Thus it fell out that again he lodged in the
house he had been accustomed to live in as a
boy, before his father had made his fortune,
and before his own name had been heard of
outside the boundaries of the isle.
He slept but little, and in the first move-
ment of the dawn sat up in bed. Why should
he ever live in London, or any other fashiona-
ble city, if this plan of marriage could be car-
ried out? Surely, with this young wife, the
island would be the best place for him. It
270
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
might be possible to rent Sylvania Castle as he
had formerly done — better still, to buy it. If
life could offer him anything worth having it
would be a home with Avice there on his
native cliffs to the end of his days.
As he sat thus thinking, and the daylight
increased, he discerned, a short distance before
him, a movement of something ghostly. His
position was facing the window, and he found
that by chance the looking-glass had swung
itself vertical, so that what he saw was his own
shape. The recognition startled him. The
person he appeared was too grievously far,
chronologically, in advance of the person he
felt himself to be. Pierston did not care to
regard the figure confronting him so mocking-
ly. Its voice seemed to say, " There's tragedy
hanging on to this!" But the question of age
being pertinent he could not give the spectre
up, and ultimately got out of bed under the
weird fascination of the reflection. Whether
he had overwalked himself lately, or what he
had done, he knew not ; but never had he
med so aged, by a score of years, as he was
represented in the glass in that cold gray morn-
ing light. While his soul was what it was,
why should he have been encumbered with
271
THE WELL-BELOVED
that withering carcass, without the ability to
shift it off for another, as his ideal Beloved
had so frequently done?
By reason of her mother's illness Avice was
now living in the house, and, on going down-
stairs, he found that they were to breakfast
en tete-a-tete. She was not then in the room,
but she entered in the course of a few minutes.
Pierston had already heard that the widow felt
better this morning, and, elated by the pros-
pect of sitting with Avice at this meal, he went
forward to her joyously. As soon as she saw
him in the full stroke of day from the window
she started ; and he then remembered that it
was their first meeting under the solar rays.
She was so overcome that she turned and
left the room as if she had forgotten some-
thing; when she re-entered she was visibly
pale. She recovered herself, and apologized.
She had been sitting up the night before the
last, she said, and was not quite so well as
usual.
There may have been some truth in this ;
but Pierston could not get over that first
scared look of hers. It was enough to give
daytime stability to his night views of a pos-
sible tragedy lurking in this wedding project.
272
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
He determined that, at any cost to his heart,
there should be no misapprehension about him
from this moment.
" Miss Pierston," he said, as they sat down,
" since it is well you should know all the truth
before we go any further, that there may be
no awkward discoveries afterwards, I am going
to tell you something about myself — if you
are not too distressed to hear it ?"
" No — let me hear it."
" I was once the lover of your mother, and
wanted to marry her ; only she wouldn't, or
rather couldn't, marry me."
" Oh, how strange !" said the girl, looking
from him to the breakfast things, and from the
breakfast things to him. " Mother has never
told me that. Yet, of course, you might have
been. I mean, you are old enough."
He took the remark as a satire she had not
intended. " Oh yes — quite old enough," he
said, grimly. " Almost too old."
" Too old for mother ? How's that ?"
" Because I belonged to your grandmother."
" No ! How can that be ?"
" I was her lover likewise. I should have
married her if I had gone straight on instead
of round the corner."
s 273
THE WELL-BELOVED
" But you couldn't have been, Mr. Pierston !
You are not old enough ! Why, how old are
you ? You have never told me."
" I am very old."
"My mother's and my grandmother's!" said
she, looking at him no longer as at a possible
husband, but as a strange fossilized relic in
human form. Pierston saw it, but, meaning
to give up the game, he did not care to spare
himself.
" Your mother's and your grandmother's
young man," he repeated.
"And were you my great -grandmother's
too ?" she asked, with an expectant interest
in his case as a drama that overcame her per-
sonal considerations for a moment.
" No — not your great-grandmother's. Your
imagination beats even my confessions! . . .
But I am very old, as you see."
" I did not know it !" said she, in an appalled
murmur. " You do not look so ; and I thought
that what you looked you were."
"And you — you are very young," he con-
tinued.
A stillness followed, during which she sat in
a troubled constraint, regarding him now and
then with something in her open eyes and
274
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
large pupils that might have been sympathy
or nervousness. Pierston ate scarce any break-
fast, and, rising abruptly from the table, said
he would take a walk on the cliffs, as the
morning was fine.
He did so, proceeding along the northeast
heights for nearly a mile. He had virtually
given Avice up, but not formally. His in-
tention had been to go back to the house in
half an hour and pay a morning visit to the
invalid ; but by not returning the plans of the
previous evening might be allowed to lapse
silently, as mere pourparlers that had come to
nothing in the face of Avice's want of love
for him. Pierston accordingly went straight
along, and in the course of an hour was at his
Budmouth lodgings.
Nothing occurred till the evening to in-
form him how his absence had been taken.
Then a note arrived from Mrs. Pierston;
it was written in pencil, evidently as she
lay.
" I am alarmed," she said, " at your going
so suddenly. Avice seems to think she has
offended you. She did not mean to do that,
I am sure. It makes me dreadfully anxious!
Will you send a line? Surely you will not
275
THE WELL-BELOVED
desert us now — my heart is so set on my
child's welfare?"
" Desert you I won't," said Jocelyn. " It is
too much like the original case. But I must
let her desert me."
On his return, with no other object than
that of wishing Mrs. Pierston good-bye, he
found her painfully agitated. She clasped his
hand and wetted it with her tears.
" Oh, don't be offended with her !" she cried.
"She's young. We are one people — don't
marry a kimberlin ! It will break my heart if
you forsake her now ! Avice !"
The girl came. " My manner was hasty
and thoughtless this morning," she said, in a
low voice. " Please pardon me. I wish to
abide by my promise."
Her mother, still tearful, again joined their
hands ; and the engagement stood as before.
Pierston went back to Budmouth, but dimly
seeing how curiously, through his being a rich
suitor, ideas of beneficence and reparation
were retaining him in the course arranged by
her mother, and urged by his own desire in
the face of his understanding.
276
ON THE VERGE OF POSSESSION
In anticipation of his marriage Pierston had
taken a new red house of the approved Ken-
sington pattern, with a new studio at the
back as large as a mediaeval barn. Hither, in
collusion with the elder Avice — whose health
had mended somewhat — he invited mother
and daughter to spend a week or two with
him, thinking thereby to exercise on the lat-
ter's imagination an influence which was not
practicable while he was a guest at their
house, and, by interesting his betrothed in
the fitting and furnishing of this residence, to
create in her an ambition to be its mistress.
It was a pleasant, reposeful time to be in
town. There was nobody to interrupt them
in their proceedings, and, it being out of the
season, the largest tradesmen were as atten-
tive to their wants as if those firms had never
before been honored with a single customer
277
THE WELL-BELOVED
whom they really liked. Pierston and his
guests, almost equally inexperienced — for the
sculptor had nearly forgotten what knowledge
of householding he had acquired earlier in life
— could consider and practise thoroughly a
species of skeleton - drill in receiving visitors
when the pair should announce themselves as
married and at home in the coming winter
season.
Avice was charming, even if a little cold.
He congratulated himself yet again that time
should have reserved for him this final chance
for one of the line. She was somewhat like
her mother, whom he had loved in the flesh,
but she had the soul of her grandmother,
whom he had loved in the spirit — and, for
that matter, loved now. Only one criticism
had he to pass upon his choice ; though in
outward semblance her grandam idealized, she
had not the first Avice's candor, but rather
her mother's closeness. He never knew ex-
actly what she was thinking and feeling. Yet
he seemed to have such prescriptive rights in
women of her blood that her occasional want
of confidence did not deeply trouble him.
It was one of those ripe and mellow after-
noons that sometimes color London with their
278
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
golden light at this time of the year, and pro-
duce those marvellous sunset effects which, if
they were not known to be made up of kitch-
en coal-smoke and animal exhalations, would
be rapturously applauded. Behind the per-
pendicular, oblique, zigzagged, and curved
zinc " tall-boys," that formed a gray pattern
not unlike early Gothic numerals against the
sky, the men and women on tops of omni-
buses saw an irradiation of topaz hues, dark-
ened here and there into richest russet.
There had been a sharp shower during the
afternoon, and Pierston — who had to take care
of himself — had worn a pair of galoshes on his
short walk in the street. He noiselessly en-
tered the studio, inside which some gleams of
the same mellow light had managed to creep,
and where he guessed he should find his pro-
spective wife and mother-in-law awaiting him
with tea. But only Avice was there, seated
beside the teapot of brown delf, which, as
artists, they affected, her back being towards
him. She was holding her handkerchief to
her eyes, and he saw that she was weeping
silently.
In another moment he perceived th.it she
was weeping over a book. By this time she
T 279
THE WELL-BELOVED
had heard him, and came forward. He made
it appear that he had not noticed her distress,
and they discussed some arrangements of fur-
niture. When he had taken a cup of tea she
went away, leaving the book behind her.
Pierston took it up. The volume was an
old school-book — Stievenard's Lectures Fran-
caises — with her name in it as a pupil at
Sandbourne High-school, and date-markings
denoting lessons taken at a comparatively re-
cent time, for Avice had been but a novice
as governess when he discovered her.
For a school-girl — which she virtually was
— to weep over a school-book was strange.
Could she have been affected by some subject
in the readings? Impossible. Pierston fell
to thinking, and zest died for the process of
furnishing, which he had undertaken so gayly.
Somehow, the bloom was again disappearing
from his approaching marriage. Yet he loved
Avice more and more tenderly ; he feared
sometimes that in the solicitousness of his
affection he was spoiling her by indulging
her every whim.
He looked round the large and ambitious
apartment, now becoming clouded with shades,
out of which the white and cadaverous coun-
280
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
tenances of his studies, casts, and other lum-
ber peered meditatively at him, as if they
were saying, "What are you going to do now,
old boy?" They had never looked like that
while standing in his past homely workshop,
where all the real labors of his life had been
carried out. What should a man of his age,
who had not for years done anything to speak
of — certainly not to add to his reputation as
an artist — want with a new place like this?
It was all because of the elect lady, and she
apparently did not want him.
Picrston did not observe anything further
in Avice to cause him misgiving till one din-
ner-time, a week later, towards the end of the
visit. Then, as he sat himself between her
and her mother at their limited table, he was
struck with her nervousness, and was tempted
to say, " Why are you troubled, my little dear-
est ?" in tones which disclosed that he was as
troubled as she.
"Am I troubled?" she said, with a start,
turning her gentle hazel eyes upon him.
"Yes, I suppose I am. It is because I have
received a letter — from an old friend."
" You didn't show it to me," said her mother.
"No— I tore it up."
281
THE WELL-BELOVED
"Why?"
" It was not necessary to keep it, so I de-
stroyed it."
Mrs. Pierston did not press her further on
the subject, and Avice showed no disposition
to continue it. They retired rather early, as
they always did, but Pierston remained pacing
about his studio a long while, musing on many
things, not the least being the perception that
to wed a woman may be by no means the
same thing as to be united with her. The
" old friend " of Avice's remark had sound-
ed very much like " lover." Otherwise why
should the letter have so greatly disturbed
her?
There seemed to be something uncanny,
after all, about London in its relation to his
contemplated marriage. When she had first
come up she was easier with him than now.
And yet his bringing her there had helped his
cause ; the house had decidedly impressed her
— almost overawed her ; and though he owned
that by no law of nature or reason had her
mother or himself any right to urge on Avice
partnership with him against her inclination,
he resolved to make the most of having her
under his influence by getting the wedding
282
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
details settled before she and her mother
left.
The next morning he proceeded to do this.
When he encountered Avice there was a trace
of apprehension on her face ; but he set that
down to a fear that she had offended him the
night before by her taciturnity. Directly he
requested her mother, in Avice's presence, to
get her to fix the day quite early, Mrs. Pier-
ston became brighter and brisker. She, too,
plainly had doubts about the wisdom of delay,
and turning to her daughter said, " Now, my
dear, do you hear ?"
It was ultimately agreed that the widow
and her daughter should go back in a day or
two, to await Pierston's arrival on the wed-
ding-eve, immediately after their return.
In pursuance of the arrangement, Pierston
found himself on the south shore of England
in the gloom of the aforesaid evening, the isle,
as he ' 1 across at it with his approach,
being just discernible as a moping counte-
nance, a creature sullen with a sense that he
about to withdraw from its keeping the
rarest object it had ever owned. lie had
Lome alone, not to embarrass them, and had
283
THE WELL-BELOVED
intended to halt a couple of hours in the
neighboring seaport to give some orders relat-
ing to the wedding, but the little railway train
being in waiting to take him on, he proceeded
with a natural impatience, resolving to do his
business here by messenger from the isle.
He passed the ruins of the Tudor castle and
the long, featureless rib of grinding pebbles
that screened off the outer sea, which could
be heard lifting and dipping rhythmically in
the wide vagueness of the Bay. At the un-
der-hill island townlet of the Wells there were
no flys, and, leaving his things to be brought
on, as he often did, he climbed the eminence
on foot.
Half-way up the steepest part of the pass
he saw in the dusk a figure pausing — the
single person on the incline. Though it was
too dark to identify faces, Pierston gathered
from the way in which the halting stranger
was supporting himself by the hand-rail, which
here bordered the road to assist climbers, that
the person was exhausted.
"Anything the matter?" he said.
"Oh no — not much," was returned by the
other. " But it is steep just here."
The accent was not quite that of an Eng-
284
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
lishman, and struck him as hailing from one
of the Channel Islands. " Can't I help you
up to the top?" he said, for the voice, though
that of a young man, seemed faint and
shaken.
" No, thank you. I have been ill ; but I
thought I was all right again, and, as the night
was fine, I walked into the island by the road.
It turned out to be rather too much for me,
as there is some weakness left still, and this
stiff incline brought it out."
" Naturally. You'd better take hold of my
arm — at any rate, to the brow here."
Thus pressed, the stranger did so, and they
went on towards the ridge, till, reaching the
lime -kiln standing there, the stranger aban-
doned his hold, saying, " Thank you for your
assistance, sir. Good-night."
" I don't think I recognize your voice as a
native's?"
" No, it is not. I am a Jersey man. Good-
night, sir."
u Good-night, if you are sure you can get on.
Here, take this stick — it is no use to me."
Saying which, I n put his walking-stick
into the young man's hand.
" Thank you again. 1 dial] be quite re-
THE WELL-BELOVED
covered when I have rested a minute or two.
Don't let me detain you, please."
The stranger, as he spoke, turned his face
towards the south, where the Beal light had
just come into view, and stood regarding it
with an obstinate fixity. As he evidently
wished to be left to himself, Jocelyn went on,
and troubled no more about him, though the
desire of the young man to be rid of his com-
pany, after accepting his walking-stick and his
arm, had come with a suddenness that was
almost emotional ; and impressionable as Joce-
lyn was, no less now than in youth, he was
saddened for a minute by the sense that there
were people in the world who did not like
even his sympathy.
However, a pleasure which obliterated all
this arose when Pierston drew near to the
house that was likely to be his dear home on
all future visits to the isle, perhaps even his
permanent home as he grew older and the as-
sociations of his youth reasserted themselves.
It had been, too, his father's house, the house
in which he was born, and he amused his fancy
with plans for its enlargement under the super-
vision of Avice and himself. It was a still
greater pleasure to behold a tall and shapely
286
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
figure standing against the light of the open
door and presumably awaiting him.
Avice, who it was, gave a little jump when
she recognized him, but dutifully allowed him
to kiss her when he reached her side ; though
her nervousness was only too apparent, and
was like a child's towards a parent who may
prove stern.
" How dear of you to guess that I might
come on at once instead of later!" says Joce-
lyn. " Well, if I had stayed in the town to
go to the shops, and so on, I could not have
got here till the last train. How is mother —
our mother, as I shall call her soon?"
Avice said that her mother had not been so
well, she feared not nearly so well, since her
return from London, so that she was obliged
to keep her room. The visit had perhaps
been too much for her. " But she will not
acknowledge that she is much weaker, because
she will not disturb my happiness."
Jocelyn was in a mood to let trifles of man-
ner pass, and he took no notice of the effort
which had accompanied the last word. They
went up-stairs to Mrs. Pierston, whose obvious
relief and thankfulness at sight of him were
grateful to her visitor.
THE WELL-BELOVED
" I am so, oh, so glad you are come !" she
said, huskily, as she held out her thin hand
and stifled a sob. " I have been so — "
She could get no further for a moment, and
Avice turned away weeping, and abruptly left
the room.
" I have so set my heart on this," Mrs. Pier-
ston went on, " that I have not been able to
sleep of late, for I have feared I might drop
off suddenly before she is yours, and lose the
comfort of seeing you actually united. Your
being so kind to me in old times has made me
so sure that she will find a good husband in
you that I am over-anxious, I know. Indeed,
I have not liked to let her know quite how
anxious I am."
Thus they talked till Jocelyn bade her
good-night, it being noticeable that Mrs. Pier-
ston, chastened by her illness, maintained no
longer any reserve on her gladness to acquire
him as her son - in - law ; and her feelings de-
stroyed any remaining scruples he might have
had from perceiving that Avice's consent was
rather an obedience than a desire. As he
went down -stairs, and found Avice awaiting
his descent, he wondered if anything had oc-
curred here during his absence to give Mrs.
288
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
Pierston new uneasiness about the marriage,
but it was an inquiry he could not address to
a girl whose actions could alone be the cause
of such uneasiness.
He looked round for her as he supped, but
though she had come into the room with him
she was not there now. He remembered her
telling him that she had had supper with her
mother, and Jocelyn sat on quietly musing
and sipping his wine for something near half
an hour. Wondering then for the first time
what had become of her, he rose and went to
the door. Avice was quite near him, after all
— only standing at the front door, as she had
been doing when he came, looking into the
light of the full moon which had risen since
his arrival. His sudden opening of the dining-
room door seemed to agitate her.
" What is it, dear ?" he asked.
"As mother is much better and doesn't
want me, I ought to go and see somebody I
promised to take a parcel to — I feel I ought.
And yet, as you have just come to see me — I
suppose you don't approve of my going out
while you are here?"
" Who is the person ?"
"Somebody down that way," she said, in-
t 289
THE WELL-BELOVED
definitely. It is not very far off. I am not
afraid — I go out often by myself at night
hereabout."
He reassured her good-humoredly. " If you
really wish to go, my dear, of course I don't
object. I have no authority to do that till
to-morrow, and you know that if I had it I
shouldn't use it."
" Oh, but you have ! Mother being an in-
valid, you are in her place, apart from — to-
morrow."
" Nonsense, darling. Run across to your
friend's house by all means if you want to."
" And you'll be here when I come in?"
" No, I am going down to the inn to see if
my things are brought up."
" But hasn't mother asked you to stay
here ? The spare room was got ready for
you. . . . Dear me, I am afraid I ought to
have told you !"
" She did ask me. But I have some things
coming, directed to the inn, and I had better
be there. So I'll wish you good-night, though
it is not late. I will come in quite early to-
morrow, to inquire how your mother is going
on and to wish you good-morning. You wilJ
be back again quickly this evening?"
290^
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
"Oh yes."
"And I needn't go with you for com-
pany ?
"Oh no, thank you. It is no distance."
Pierston then departed, thinking how en-
tirely her manner was that of one to whom a
question of doing anything was a question of
permission and not of judgment. He had no
sooner gone than Avice took a parcel from a
cupboard, put on her hat and cloak, and follow-
ing by the way he had taken till she reached
the entrance to Sylvania Castle, there stood
still. She could hear Pierston's footsteps pass-
ing down East Quarriers to the inn ; but she
went no farther in that direction. Turning
into the lane on the right, of which mention
has so often been made, she went quickly past
the last cottage, and, having entered the gorge
beyond, she clambered into the ruin of the Red
King's or ]>ow-and-Arrow Castle, standing as a
square black mass against the moonlit, indefi-
nite sea.
VI
THE WELL-BELOVED IS — WHERE?
Mrs. Pierston passed a restless night, but
this she let nobody know ; nor, what was pain-
fully evident to herself, that her prostration
was increased by anxiety and suspense about
the wedding on which she had too much set
her heart.
During the very brief space in which she
dozed Avice came into her room. As it was
not infrequent for her daughter to look in
upon her thus, she took little notice, merely
saying, to assure the girl, " I am better, dear.
Don't come in again. Get to sleep yourself."
The mother, however, went thinking anew.
She had no apprehensions about this mar-
riage. She felt perfectly sure that it was the
best thing she could do for her girl. Not a
young woman on the island but was envying
Avice at that moment; for Jocelyn was ab-
surdly young for three -score, a good-looking
292
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
man, one whose history was generally known
here; as also were the exact figures of the fort-
une he had inherited from his father, and the
social standing he could claim — a standing,
however, which that fortune would not have
been large enough to procure unassisted by
his reputation in his art.
But Avice had been weak enough, as her
mother knew, to indulge in fancies for local
youths from time to time, and Mrs. Pierston
could not help congratulating herself that her
daughter had been so docile in the circum-
stances. Yet to every one, except, perhaps,
Avice herself, Jocelyn was the most romantic
of lovers. Indeed, was there ever such a ro-
mance as that man embodied in his relations
to her house ? Rejecting the first Avice, the
second had rejected him, and to rally to the
third with final achievement was an artistic
and tender finish to which it was ungrateful
in anybody to be blind.
The widow thought that the second Avice
might probably not have rejected Pierston on
that occasion in the London studio so many
years ago if destiny had not arranged that she
should have been secretly united to another
when the proposing moment came.
293
THE WELL-BELOVED
But what had come was best. " My God!"
she said at times that night, " to think my
aim in writing to him should be fulfilling it-
self like this !"
When all was right and done, what a success
upon the whole her life would have been ! She
who had begun her career as a cottage-girl, a
small quarry-owner's daughter, had sunk so
low as to the position of laundress, had en-
gaged in various menial occupations, had made
an unhappy marriage for love — which had, how-
ever, in the long run, thanks to Jocelyn's man-
agement, much improved her position — was at
last to see her daughter secure what she herself
had just missed securing, and established in a
home of affluence and refinement.
Thus the sick woman excited herself as
the hours went on. At last, in her tense-
ness, it seemed to her that the time had
already come at which the household was
stirring, and fancied she heard conversation
in her daughter's room. But she found that
it was only five o'clock, and not yet daylight.
Her state was such that she could see the
hangings of the bed tremble with her tremors.
She had declared overnight that she did not
require any one to sit up with her, but she
294
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
now rang a little hand-bell, and in a few min-
utes a nurse appeared — Ruth Stockwool, an
island woman and a neighbor, whom Mrs.
Pierston knew well, and who knew all Mrs.
Pierston's history.
" I am so nervous that I can't stay by my-
self," said the widow. " And I thought I
heard Becky dressing Miss Avice in her wed-
ding things."
" Oh no — not yet, ma'am. There's nobody
up. But I'll get you something."
When Mrs. Pierston had taken a little nour-
ishment she went on : "I can't help frighten-
ing myself with thoughts that she won't marry
him. You see, he is older than Avice."
"Yes, he is," said her neighbor. "But I
don't see how anything can hender the wed-
den now."
"Avice, you know, had fancies; at least
one fancy for another man — a young fellow
of five -and -twenty. And she's been very
secret and odd about it. I wish she had
raved and cried and had it out ; but she's
been quite the other way. I know she's fond
of him still."
" What — that young Frenchman, Mr. Le-
verre o' Sandbourne ? I've heard a little of it.
295
THE WELL-BELOVED
But I should say there wadden much between
'em."
" I don't think there was. But I've a sort
of conviction that she saw him last night. I
believe it was only to bid him good-bye and
return him some books he had given her ; but
I wish she had never known him ; he is rather
an excitable, impulsive young man, and he
might make mischief. He isn't a Frenchman,
though he has lived in France. His father
was a Jersey gentleman, and on his becoming
a widower he married as his second wife a na-
tive of this very island. That's mainly why
the young man is so at home in these parts."
" Ah — now I follow 'ee. She was a Ben-
comb — his stepmother; I heard something
about her years ago."
" Yes ; her father had the biggest stone-
trade on the island at one time ; but the name
is forgotten here now. He retired years be-
fore I was born. However, mother used to
tell me that she was a handsome young wom-
an, who tried to catch Mr. Pierston when he
was a young man, and scandalized herself a
bit with him. She went off abroad with her
father, who had made a fortune here ; but
when he got over there he lost it nearly all in
296
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
some way. Years after she married this Jer-
sey man, Mr. Leverre, who had been fond of
her as a girl, and she brought up his child as
her own."
Mrs. Pierston paused, but as Ruth did not
ask any question she presently resumed her
self-relieving murmur :
" How Miss Avice got to know the young
man was in this way : When Mrs. Leverre's
husband died she came from Jersey to live at
Sandbourne, and made it her business one
day to cross over to this place to make in-
quiries about Mr. Jocelyn Pierston. As my
name was Pierston, she called upon me with
her son, and so Avice and he got acquainted.
When she went back to Sandbourne to the
finishing -school they kept up the acquaint-
ance in secret. He taught French somewhere
there, and does still, I believe."
" Well, I hope she'll forget en. He idden
good enough."
" I hope so — I hope so. . . . Now, I'll try to
get a little nap."
Ruth Stockwool went back to her room,
where, finding it would not be necessary to
get up for another hour, she lay down again
and soon slept. Her bed was close to the
297
THE WELL-BELOVED
staircase, from which it was divided by a lath
partition only, and her consciousness either
was or seemed to be aroused by light brush-
ing touches on the outside of the partition, as
of fingers feeling the way down-stairs in the
dark. The slight noise passed, and in a few-
seconds she dreamed, or fancied she could
hear, the unfastening of the back door.
She had nearly sunk into another sound
sleep when precisely the same phenomena
were repeated — fingers brushing along the
wall close to her head, down, downward, the
soft opening of the door, its close, and silence
again.
She now became clearly awake. The repe-
tition of the process had made the whole mat-
ter a singular one. Early as it was, the first
sounds might have been those of the house-
maid descending, though why she should have
come down so stealthily and in the dark did
not make itself clear. But the second per-
formance was inexplicable. Ruth got out of
bed and lifted her blind. The dawn was
hardly yet pink, and the light from the sand-
bank was not yet extinguished. But the
bushes of euonymus against the white palings
of the front garden could be seen, also the
298
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
light surface of the road winding away like a
ribbon to the north entrance of Sylvania Cas-
tle, thence round to the village, the cliffs, and
the cove behind. Upon the road two dark
figures could just be discerned, one a little
way behind the other, but overtaking and
joining the foremost as Ruth looked. Af-
ter all, they might be quarriers or lighthouse-
keepers from the south of the island, or fisher-
men just landed from a night's work. There
being nothing to connect them with the noises
she had heard indoors, she dismissed the whole
subject, and went to bed again.
Jocelyn had promised to pay an early visit
to ascertain the state of Mrs. Pierston's health
after her night's rest, her precarious condition
being more obvious to him than to Avice, and
making him a little anxious. Subsequent
events caused him to remember that while he
was dressing he casually observed two or three
boatmen standing near the cliff beyond the
village, and apparently watching with deep
interest what seemed to be a boat far away
towards the opposite shore of South Wessex.
At half-past eight he came from the door of
the inn and went straight to Mrs. Pierston's.
299
THE WELL-BELOVED
On approaching, he discovered that a strange
expression which seemed to hang about the
house- front that morning was more than a
fancy, the gate, door, and two windows being
open, though the blinds of other windows were
not drawn up, the whole lending a vacant,
dazed look to the domicile, as of a person gap-
ing in sudden stultification. Nobody answered
his knock, and walking into the dining-room
he found that no breakfast had been laid. His
flashing thought was, " Mrs. Pierston is dead."
While standing in the room somebody came
down -stairs, and Jocelyn encountered Ruth
Stockwool, an open letter fluttering in her
hand.
" Oh, Mr. Pierston, Mr. Pierston ! The Lord-
a-Lord !M
" What ? Mrs. Pierston—"
" No, no ! Miss Avice ! She is gone ! — yes
— gone ! Read ye this, sir. It was left in her
bedroom, and we be fairly gallied out of our
senses !"
He took the letter and confusedly beheld
that it was in two handwritings, the first sec-
tion being in Avice's :
" My dear Mother, — How ever will you forgive
me for what I have done ! So deceitful as it seems.
300
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
And yet till this night I had no idea of deceiving either
you or Mr. Pierston.
" Last night at ten o'clock I went out, as you may
have guessed, to see Mr. Leverre for the last time,
and to give him back his books, letters, and little
presents to me. I went only a few steps — to Bow-
and-Arrow Castle, where we met, as we had agreed to
do, since he could not call. When I reached the place
I found him there waiting, but quite ill. He had
been unwell at his mother's house for some days, and
had been obliged to stay in bed, but he had got up
on purpose to come and bid me good-bye. The over-
exertion of the journey upset him, and though we
stayed and stayed till twelve o'clock, he felt quite
unable to go back home — unable, indeed, to move
more than a few yards. I had tried so hard not to
love him any longer, but I loved him so now that I
could not desert him and leave him out there to catch
his death. So I helped him — nearly carrying him —
on and on to our door, and then round to the back.
Here he got a little better, and as he could not stay
there, and everybody was now asleep, I helped him
up-stairs into the room we had prepared for Mr. Pier-
ston if he should have wanted one. I got him into
bed, and then fetched some brandy and a little of
your tonic. Did you see me come into your room
for it, or were you asleep ?
" I sat by him all night. He improved slowly, and
we talked over what we had better do. I felt that,
though I had intended to give him up, I could not
now becomingly marry any other man, and that I
301
THE WELL-BELOVED
ought to marry him. We decided to do it at once,
before anybody could hinder us. So we came down
before it was light, and have gone away to get the
ceremony solemnized.
" Tell Mr. Pierston it was not premeditated, but the
result of an accident. I am sincerely sorry to have
treated him with what he will think unfairness, but
though I did not love him I meant to obey you and
marry him. But God sent this necessity of my hav-
ing to give shelter to my love, to prevent, I think,
my doing what I am now convinced would have been
wrong.
" Ever your loving daughter, AviCE."
The second was in a man's hand :
" Dear Mother (as you will soon be to me), — Avice
has clearly explained above how it happened that I
have not been able to give her up to Mr. Pierston. I
think I should have died if I had not accepted the
hospitality of a room in your house this night and
your daughter's tender nursing through the dark,
dreary hours. We love each other beyond expres-
sion, and it is obvious that, if we are human, we can-
not resist marrying now, in spite of friends' wishes.
Will you please send the note lying beside this to my
mother ? It is merely to explain what I have done.
" Yours, with warmest regard,
" Henri Leverre."
Jocelyn turned away and looked out of the
window.
302
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
" Mrs. Pierston thought she heard some talk-
ing in the night, but of course she put it down
to fancy. And she remembers Miss Avice
coming into her room at one o'clock in the
morning, and going to the table where the
medicine was standing. A sly girl — all the
time her young man within a yard or two, in
the very room, and a -using the very clean
sheets that you, sir, were to have used ! They
are our best linen ones, got up beautiful, and
a- kept wi' rosemary. Really, sir, one would
say you stayed out o' your chammer o' pur-
pose to oblige the young man with a bed !"
" Don't blame them — don't blame them !"
said Jocelyn, in an even and characterless
voice. " Don't blame her, particularly. She
didn't make the circumstances. I did. . . .
It was how I served her grandmother. . . .
Well, she's gone ! You needn't make a mys-
tery of it. Tell it to all the island ; say that
a man came to marry a wife, and didn't find
her at home. Tell everybody that she's run
away. It must be known sooner or later."
One of the servants said, after waiting a few
moments, " We sha'n't do that, sir."
"Oh! Why won't you?"
"We liked her too well, with all her faults."
303
THE WELL-BELOVED
"Ah — did you?" said he, and he sighed.
He perceived that the younger maids were
secretly on Avice's side.
" How does her mother bear it ?" Jocelyn
asked. " Is she awake ?"
Mrs. Pierston had hardly slept, and, having
learned the tidings inadvertently, became so
distracted and incoherent as to be like a per-
son in a delirium ; till, a few moments before
he arrived, all her excitement ceased, and she
lay in a weak, quiet silence.
" Let me go up," Pierston said. "And send
for the doctor."
Passing Avice's chamber, he perceived that
the little bed had not been slept on. At the
door of the spare room he looked in. In one
corner stood a walking-stick — his own.
"Where did that come from?"
" We found it there, sir."
" Ah, yes — I gave it to him. Tis like me
to play another's game!"
It was the last spurt of bitterness that Joce-
lyn let escape him. He went on towards Mrs.
Pierston's room, preceded by the servant.
" Mr. Pierston has come, ma'am," he heard
her say to the invalid. But as the latter took
no notice the woman rushed forward to the
304
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
bed. "What has happened to her, Mr. Pier-
ston ? Oh, what do it mean ?"
Avice the Second was lying placidly in the
position in which the nurse had left her ; but
no breath came from her lips, and a rigidity
of feature was accompanied by the precise
expression which had characterized her face
when Pierston had her as a girl in his stu-
dio. He saw that it was death, though she
appeared to have breathed her last only a few
moments before.
Ruth Stockwool's composure deserted her.
" Tis the shock of rinding Miss Avice gone
that has done it !" she cried. " She has killed
her mother!"
" Don't say such a terrible thing !" ex-
claimed Jocelyn.
" But she ought to have obeyed her mother
— a good mother as she was ! How she had
set her heart upon the wedding, poor soul ;
and wc couldn't help her knowing what had
happened ! Oh, how ungrateful young folk
be ! That girl will rue this morning's work !"
" We must get the doctor," said Pierston,
mechanically, hastening from the room.
When the local practitioner came he merely
confirmed their own verdict, and thought her
u 305
THE WELL-BELOVED
death had undoubtedly been hastened by the
shock of the ill news upon a feeble heart, fol-
lowing a long strain of anxiety about the wed-
ding. He did not consider that an inquest
would be necessary.
The two shadowy figures seen through the
gray gauzes of the morning by Ruth, five
hours before this time, had gone on to the
open place by the north entrance of Sylvania
Castle, where the lane to the ruins of the old
castle branched off. A listener would not
have gathered that a single word passed be-
tween them. The man walked with difficulty,
supported by the woman. At this spot they
stopped and kissed each other a long while.
"We ought to walk all the way to Bud-
mouth, if we wish not to be discovered," he
said, sadly. " And I can't even get across
the island, even by your help, darling. It is
two miles to the foot of the hill."
She, who was trembling, tried to speak con-
solingly :
" If you could walk we should have to go
down the Street of Wells, where perhaps
somebody would know me. Now, if we get
below here to the Cove, can't we push off one
306
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
of the little boats I saw there last night, and
paddle along close to the shore till we get to
the north side? Then we can walk across to
the station very well. It is quite calm, and as
the tide sets in that direction it will take us
along of itself, without much rowing. I've
often got round in a boat that way."
This seemed to be the only plan that offered,
and abandoning the straight road they wound
down the defile spanned farther on by the old
castle arch, and forming the original fosse of
the fortress.
The stroke of their own footsteps, lightly as
these fell, was flapped back to them with im-
pertinent gratuitousness by the vertical faces
of the rock, so still was everything around. A
little farther, and they emerged upon the open
ledge of the lower tier of cliffs, to the right be-
ing the sloping pathway leading down to the
secluded creek at their base — the single prac-
ticable spot of exit from or entrance to the
isle on this side by a sea-going craft, once an
active wharf, whence many a fine public build-
ing had sailed — including St. Paul's Cathedral.
The timorous shadowy shapes descended
the footway, one at least of them knowing the
place so well that she found it scarcely neces-
THE WELL-BELOVED
sary to guide herself down by touching the
natural wall of stone on her right hand, as her
companion did. Thus, with quick suspensive
breathings they arrived at the bottom, and
trod the few yards of shingle which, on the
forbidding shore hereabout, could be found at
this spot alone. It was so solitary as to be
unvisited often for four-and-twenty hours by
a living soul. Upon the confined beach were
drawn up two or three fishing-lerrets, and a
couple of smaller ones, beside them being a
rough slipway for launching, and a boat-house
of tarred boards. The two lovers united their
strength to push the smallest of the boats
down the slope, and floating it they scrambled
in.
The girl broke the silence by asking,
" Where are the oars?"
He felt about the boat, but could find none.
" I forgot to look for the oars !" he said.
" They are locked in the boat-house, I sup-
pose. Now we can only steer and trust to the
current !"
The currents here were of a complicated
kind. It was true, as the girl had said, that the
tide ran round the north, but at a special mo-
ment in every flood there set in along the
308
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
shore a narrow reflux, contrary to the general
outer flow, called " The Southern " by the
local sailors. It was produced by the pecul-
iar curves of coast lying east and west of
the Beal ; these bent southward in two back
streams the up-Channel flow on each side of the
peninsula, which two streams united outside
the Beal, and there met the direct tidal flow,
the confluence of the three currents making
the surface of the sea at this point to boil like
a pot, even in calmest weather. The disturbed
area, as is well known, is called the Race.
Thus, although the outer sea was now run-
ning northward to the roadstead and the main-
land of Wessex, " The Southern " ran in full
force towards the Beal and the Race beyond.
It caught the lovers' hapless boat in a few mo-
ments, and, unable to row across it — mere riv-
er's width that it was — they beheld the gray
rocks near them, and the grim wrinkled fore-
head of the isle above, sliding away northward.
They gazed helplessly at each other, though,
in the long-living faith of youth, without dis-
tinct fear. The undulations increased in mag-
nitude and swung them higher and lower.
The boat rocked, received a smart slap of the
waves now and then, and wheeled round, so
309
THE WELL-BELOVED
that the light -ship which stolidly winked at
them from the quicksand, the single object
which told them of their bearings, was some-
times on their right hand and sometimes on
their left. Nevertheless, they could always
discern from it that their course, whether
stemward or sternward, was steadily south.
A bright idea occurred to the young man.
He pulled out his handkerchief and, striking
a light, set it on fire. She gave him hers, and
he made that flare up also. The only avail-
able fuel left was the small umbrella the girl
had brought ; this was also kindled, in an open-
ed state, and he held it up by the stem till it
was consumed.
The light-ship had loomed quite large by
this time, and a few minutes after they had
burned the handkerchiefs and umbrella a col-
ored flame replied to them from the vessel.
They flung their arms around each other.
" I knew we shouldn't be drowned !" said
Avice, hysterically.
" I thought we shouldn't too," said he.
With the appearance of day a boat put off
to their assistance, and they were towed tow-
ards the heavy red hulk with the large white
letters on its side.
310
VII
AN OLD TABERNACLE IN A NEW ASPECT
The October day thickened into dusk, and
Jocelyn sat musing beside the corpse of Mrs.
Pierston. Avice having gone away, nobody
knew whither, he had acted as the nearest
friend of the family, and attended as well as
he could to the sombre duties necessitated by
her mother's decease. It was doubtful, indeed,
if anybody else were in a position to do so.
Of Avice the Second's two brothers, one had
been drowned at sea, and the other had emi-
grated, while her only child besides the present
Avice had died in infancy. As for her friends,
she had become so absorbed in her ambitious
and nearly accomplished design of marrying
her daughter to Jocelyn, that she had gradually
completed that estrangement between herself
and the other islanders which had been begun
SO lor is when, a young woman, she had
herself been asked by Pierston to marry him.
311
THE WELL-BELOVED
On her tantalizing inability to accept the
honor offered, she and her husband had been
set up in a matter-of-fact business in the stone-
trade by her patron, but that unforgettable
request in the London studio had made her
feel ever since a refined kinship with sculpture,
and a proportionate aloofness from mere quar-
rying, which was, perhaps, no more than a
venial weakness in Avice the Second. Her
daughter's objection to Jocelyn she could
never understand. To her own eye he was no
older than when he had proposed to her.
As he sat darkling here, the ghostly outlines
of former shapes taken by his Love came
round their sister, the unconscious corpse, con-
fronting him from the wall in sad array, like
the pictured Trojan women beheld by ^Eneas
on the walls of Carthage. Many of them he
had idealized in bust and in figure from time
to time, but it was not as such that he remem-
bered and reanimated them now ; rather was it
in all their natural circumstances, weaknesses,
and stains. And then as he came to himself
their voices grew fainter ; they had all gone off
on their different careers, and he was left here
alone.
The probable ridicule that would result to
312
^ A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
him from the events of the day he did not
mind in itself at all. But he would fain have
removed the misapprehensions on which it
would be based. That, however, was impos-
sible. Nobody would ever know the truth
about him — what it was he had sought that
had so eluded, tantalized, and escaped him ;
what it was that had led him such a dance, and
had at last, as he believed just now, in the fresh-
ness of his loss, been discovered in the girl who
had left him. It was not the flesh; he had
never knelt low to that Not a womarTiTT the
world had been wrecked by him, though he
had been impassioned by so many. Nobody
wouldj^uessJJieJiirtlier sentiment— thej:ordial
loving-kindness — which had lain behind what
had. seemed to him the enraptured fulfilment
of a pleasing destiny postponed for Torty years.
His attractiorTto thethird Avice would be re-
garded by the world as the selfish designs of
in elderly man on a maid.
I Us life seemed no longer a professional
man's experience, but a ghost story; and
he would fain have vanished from his haunts
on this critical afternoon, as the rest had
done. He desired to sleep away his tenden-
cies, to make something happen which would
313
THE WELL-BELOVED
put an end to his bondage to__beaut^_in_J;he
ideal.
So he sat on till it was quite dark and a
light was brought. There was a chilly wind
blowing outside, and the light -ship on the
quicksand afar looked harassed and forlorn.
The haggard solitude was broken by a ring at
the door.
Pierston heard a voice below, the accents
of a woman. They had a ground quality of
familiarity, a superficial articulation of strange-
ness. Only one person in all his experience
had ever possessed precisely those tones; rich,
as if they had once been powerful. Explana-
tions seemed to be asked for and given, and
in a minute he was informed that a lady was
down-stairs whom perhaps he would like to
see.
"Who is the lady?" Jocelyn asked.
The servant hesitated a little. " Mrs. Le-
verre — the mother of the — young gentleman
Miss Avice has run off with."
" Yes — I'll see her," said Pierston.
He covered the face of the dead Avice, and
descended. " Leverre," he said to himself.
His ears had known that name before to-day.
It was the name those travelling Americans he
3*4
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
had met in Rome gave the woman he supposed
might be Marcia Bencomb.
A sudden adjusting light burst upon many
familiar things at that moment. He found
the visitor in the drawing-room, standing up,
veiled, the carriage which had brought her be-
ing in waiting at the door. By the dim light
he could see nothing of her features in such
circumstances.
"Mr. Pierston?"
" I am Mr. Pierston."
" You represent the late Mrs. Pierston ?"
" I do — though I am not one of the family."
" I know it. ... I am Marcia — after forty
years."
" I was divining as much, Marcia. May the
lines have fallen to you in pleasant places since
we last met! But, of all moments of my life,
why do you choose to hunt me up now?"
"Why — I am the stepmother and only rela-
tion of the young man your bride eloped with
this morning."
11 1 was just guessing that, too, as I came
down-stairs. But — "
"And I am naturally making inquiries."
"Yes. Let us take it quietly and shut the
door."
315
THE WELL-BELOVED
Marcia sat down. And he learned that the
conjunction of old things and new was no acci-
dent. What Mrs. Pierston had discussed with
i
her nurse and neighbor as vague intelligence
was now revealed to Jocelyn at first hand by
Marcia herself ; how, many years after their
separation, and when she was left poor by the
death of her impoverished father, she had be-
come the wife of that bygone Jersey lover of
hers, who wanted a tender nurse and mother
for the infant left him by his first wife recently
deceased; how he had died a few years later,
leaving her with the boy, whom she had
brought up at St. Heliers and in Paris, educat-
ing him as well as she could with her limited
means, till he became the French master at a
school in Sandbourne; and how, a year ago,
she and her son had got to know Mrs. Pierston
and her daughter on their visit to the island,
"to ascertain," she added, more deliberately,
" not entirely for sentimental reasons, what
had become of the man with whom I eloped
in the first flush of my young womanhood, and
only missed marrying by my own will."
Pierston bowed.
"Well, that was how the acquaintance be-
tween the children began, and their passionate
316
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
attachment to each other." She detailed how
Avice had induced her mother to let her take
lessons in French of young Leverre, rendering
their meetings easy. Marcia had never thought
of hindering their intimacy, for in her recent
years of affliction she had acquired a new in-
terest in the name she had refused to take in
her purse-proud young womanhood ; and it
was not until she knew how determined Mrs.
Pierston was to make her daughter Jocelyn's
wife that she had objected to her son's ac-
quaintance with Avice. But it was too late to
hinder what had been begun. He had lately
been ill, and she had been frightened by his
not returning home the night before. The
note she had received from him that day had
only informed her that Avice and himself had
gone to be married immediately — whither she
did not know.
"What do you mean to do?" she asked.
" I do nothing: there is nothing to be done.
... It is how I served her grandmother — one
of Time's revenges."
" Served her so for me?"
" Yes. Now she me for your son."
Marcia paused a long while thinking that
over, till, arousing herself, she resumed : " But
317
THE WELL-BELOVED
can't we inquire which way they went out of
the island, or gather some particulars about
them?"
" Ay — yes. We will."
And Pierston found himself, as in a dream,
walking beside Marcia along the road in their
common quest. He discovered that almost
every one of the neighboring inhabitants knew
more about the lovers than he did himself.
At the corner some men were engaged in
conversation on the occurrence. It was allu-
sive only, but, knowing the dialect, Pierston
and Marcia gathered its import easily. As
soon as it had got light that morning one of
the boats was discovered missing from the
creek below, and when the flight of the lovers
was made known it was inferred that they
were the culprits.
Unconsciously Pierston turned in the direc-
tion of the creek, without regarding whether
Marcia followed him, and though it was darker
than when Avice and Leverre had descended
in the morning he pursued his way down the
incline till he reached the water-side.
" Is that you, Jocelyn?"
The inquiry came from Marcia. She was
behind him, about half-way down.
318
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
"Yes," he said, noticing that it was the
first time she had called him by his Christian
name.
" I can't see where you are, and I am afraid
to follow."
Afraid to follow. How strangely that altered
his conception of her ! Till this moment she
had stood in his mind as the imperious, in-
vincible Marcia of old. There was a strange
pathos in this revelation. He went back and
felt for her hand. " I'll lead you down," he
said. And he did so.
They looked out upon the sea and the light-
ship, shining as if it had quite forgotten all
about the fugitives. " I am so uneasy," said
Marcia. " Do you think they got safely to
land?"
"Yes," replied some one other than Jocelyn.
It was a boatman smoking in the shadow of
the boat-house. He informed her that they
were picked up by the light -ship men, and
afterwards, at their request, taken across to
the opposite shore, where they landed, pro-
ceeding thence on foot to the nearest railway
station and entering the train for London.
This intelligence had reached the island about
an hour before.
319
THE WELL-BELOVED
"They'll be married to-morrow morning!"
said Marcia.
" So much the better. Don't regret it,
Marcia. He shall not lose by it. I have no
relation in the world except some twentieth
cousins in this isle, of whom her father was
one, and I'll take steps at once to make her a
good match for him. As for me ... I have
lived a day too long!"
_,
VIII
"alas for this gray shadow, once a man!"
In the month of November which followed,
Pierston was lying dangerously ill of a fever at
his house in London.
The funeral of the second Avice had hap-
pened to be on one of those drenching after-
noons of the autumn when the raw rain flies
level as the missiles of the ancient inhabi-
tants across the beaked promontory which has
formed the scene of this narrative, scarcely
alighting except against the upright sides of
things sturdy enough to stand erect. One
person only followed the corpse into the
church as chief mourner, Jocelyn Pierston —
fickle lover in the brief, faithful friend in the
long run. No means had been found of com-
municating with Avice before the interment,
though the death had been advertised in the
local and other papers in the hope that it
might catch her eye.
x 321
THE WELL-BELOVED
So, when the pathetic procession came out
of the porch and moved round into the grave-
yard, a hired vehicle from Budmouth was seen
coming at great speed along the open road
from Top-o'-Hill. It stopped at the church-
yard gate, and a young man and woman
alighted and entered, the vehicle waiting.
They glided along the path and reached Pier-
ston's side just as the body was deposited by
the grave.
He did not turn his head. He knew it was
Avice, with Henri Leverre — by this time, he
supposed, her husband. Her remorseful grief,
though silent, seemed to impregnate the at-
mosphere with its heaviness. Perceiving that
they had not expected him to be there, Pierston
edged back; and when the service was over he
kept still farther aloof, an act of considerate-
ness which she seemed to appreciate.
Thus, by his own contrivance, neither Avice
nor the young man held communication with
Jocelyn by word or by sign. After the burial
they returned as they had come.
It wras supposed that his exposure that day
in the bleakest church-yard in Wessex, telling
upon a distracted mental and bodily condition,
had thrown Pierston into the chill and fever
322
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
which held him swaying for weeks between life
and death shortly after his return to town.
When he had passed the crisis, and began to
know again that there was such a state as
mental equilibrium and physical calm, he heard
a whispered conversation going on around him
and the touch of footsteps on the carpet. The
light in the chamber was so subdued that
nothing around him could be seen with any
distinctness. Two living figures were present —
a nurse moving about softly, and a visitor. He
discerned that the latter was feminine, and for
the time this was all.
He was recalled to his surroundings by a
voice murmuring the inquiry, "Does the light
try your eyes?"
The tones seemed familiar ; they were spo-
ken by the woman who was visiting him. He
recollected them to be Marcia's, and every-
thing that had happened before he fell ill came
back to his mind.
"Are you helping to nurse me, Marc:
he
Y> . I have come up to stay here till you
are better, as you seem t<> fa I other wom-
an friend who cares whether you are dead or
alive. I am Living quite near. I am glad you
THE WELL-BELOVED
have got round the corner. We have been
very anxious.
" How good you are ! . . . And — have you
heard of the others ?"
" They are married. They have been here
to see you, and are very sorry. She sat by
you, but you did not know her. She was
broken down when she discovered her moth-
er's death, which had never once occurred
to her as being imminent. They have gone
away again. I thought it best she should
leave, now that you are out of danger. Now
you must be quiet till I come and talk again."
Pierston was conscious of a singular change
in himself, which had been revealed by this
slight discourse. He was no longer the same
man that he had hitherto been. The malig-
nant fever, or his. experiences,__Qr__hoth, had
taken away something from him, and put
something else in its place.
During the next days, with further intellect-
ual expansion, he became clearly aware of
what this was. The artistic sense_l)acU4eft
him, and he could-na-longer attach a definite
sentiment to images of beauty recalled from
the ,past^ His-^ppreciativeness was capable
pf exercising itself only on. utilitarian matters,
324
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
and recollections of Avice's good qualities
alone had any effect on his mind ; of her ap-
pearance none at all.
At first he was appalled ; and then he said,
"Thank God!"
Marcia, who, with something of her old ab-
solutism, came to his house continually to in-
quire and give orders, and to his room to see
him every afternoon, found out for herself, in
the course of his convalescence, this strange
death of the sensuous side of Jocelyn's nature.
She had said that Avice was getting extraor-
dinarily handsome, and that she did not won-
der her stepson lost his heart to her — an
inadvertent remark which she immediately
regretted, in fear lest it should agitate him.
He merely answered, however, " Yes, I sup-
pose she is handsome. She's more — a wise
girl who will make a good housewife in time.
. . . I wish you were not handsome, Marcia !"
"Why?"
" I don't quite know why. Well — it seems
a stupid quality to me. I can't understand
what it is good for any more."
"Oh — I, as a woman, think there's good
in it.
" Is there? Then I have lost all conception
325
THE WELL-BELOVED
of it. I don't know what has happened to
me. I only know I don't regret it. Robinson
Crusoe lost a day in his illness : I have lost
a faculty, for which loss Heaven be praised !"
There was something pathetic in this an-
nouncement, and Marcia sighed as she said,
" Perhaps when you get strong it will come
back to you."
Pierston shook his head. It then occurred
to him that never since the reappearance of
Marcia had he seen her in full daylight, or
without a bonnet and veil, which she always
retained on these frequent visits, and that he
had been unconsciously regarding her as the
Marcia of their early time, a fancy which the
small change in her voice well sustained. The
stately figure, the good color, the classical pro-
file, the rather large handsome nose and some-
what prominent, regular teeth, the full dark
eye, formed still the Marcia of his imagina-
tion— the queenly creature who had infatu-
ated him when the first Avice was despised
and her successors unknown. It was this old
idea which, in his revolt from beauty, had led
to his words on her handsomeness. He began
wondering now how much remained of that
presentation after forty years.
326
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
" Why don't you ever let me see you, Mar-
cia?" he asked.
" Oh, I don't know ! You mean without my
bonnet? You have never asked me to, and I
am obliged to wrap up my face with this wool
veil because I suffer so from aches in these
cold winter winds, though a thick veil is awk-
ward for any one whose sight is not so good
as it was."
The impregnable Marcia's sight not so good
as it was, and her face in the aching stage of life !
These simple things came as sermons to Jocelyn.
" But certainly I will gratify your curiosity,"
she resumed, good-naturedly. " It is really a
compliment that you should still take that
sort of interest in me."
She had moved round from the dark side of
the room to the lamp — for the daylight had
gone — and she now suddenly took off the
bonnet, veil and all. She stood revealed to
his eyes as remarkably good-looking, consid-
ering the lapse of years.
" I am — vexed !" he said, turning his head
aside impatiently. "You are fair and flve-and-
thirty — not a day more. You still suggest
beauty. You won't do as a chastisement,
Marcia !"
Y 327
THE WELL-BELOVED
"Ah, but I may! To think that you know-
woman no better after all this time !"
"How?"
" To be so easily deceived. Think : it is
lamplight ; and your sight is weak at present ;
and . . . Well, I have no reason for being any-
thing but candid now, God knows! so I will
tell you. . . . My husband was younger than
myself, and he had an absurd wish to make
people think he had married a young and
fresh-looking woman. To fall in with his van-
ity, I tried to look it. We were often in
Paris, and I became as skilled in beautifying
artifices as any passte wife of the Faubourg
St. Germain. Since his death I have kept up
the practice, partly because the vice is almost
ineradicable, and partly because I found that
it helped me with men in bringing up his
boy on small means. At this moment I am
frightfully made up. But I can cure that.
I'll come in to-morrow morning, if it is bright,
just as I really am ;. you'll find that Time has
not disappointed you. Remember, I am as
old as yourself ; and I look it !"
The morrow came, and with it Marcia, quite
early, as she had promised. It happened to
be sunny, and, shutting the bedroom door, she
328
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
went round to the window, where she uncov-
ered immediately, in his full view, and said,
" See if I am satisfactory now to you who
think beauty vain. The rest of me — and it is
a good deal — lies on my dressing-table at
home. I shall never put it on again — never !"
But she was a woman ; and her lips quiv-
ered, and there was a tear in her eye as she
exposed the ruthless treatment to which she
had subjected herself. The cruel morning
rays — as with Jocelyn under Avice's scrutiny
— showed in their full bareness, unenriched by
addition, undisguised by the arts of color and
shade, the thin remains of what had once
been Marcia's majestic bloom. She stood
the image and superscription of Age — an old
woman, pale and shrivelled, her forehead
ploughed, her cheek hollow, her hair white as
snow. To this the face he once kissed had
been brought by the raspings, chisellings,
scourgings, bakings, freezings of forty invidi-
ous years — by the thinkings of more than half
a lifetime.
" I am sorry if I shock you," she went on,
huskily but firmly, as he did not speak; "but
the moth eats the garment somewhat in such
an interval."
329
THE WELL-BELOVED
"Yes — yes! . . . Marcia, you are a brave
woman. You have the courage of the great
women of history. I can no longer love ; but
I admire you from my soul !"
" Don't say I am great. Say I have be-
gun to be passably honest. It is more than
enough."
"Well — I'll say nothing, then, more than
how wonderful it is that a woman should have
been able to put back the clock of time thirty
years !"
" It shames me now, Jocelyn. I shall never
do it any more."
As soon as he was strong enough he got
her to take him round to his studio in a car-
riage. The place had been kept aired, but
the shutters were shut, and they opened
them themselves. He looked round upon
the familiar objects — some complete and ma-
tured, the main of them seedlings, grafts, and
scions of beauty, waiting for a mind to grow
to perfection in.
" No — I don't like them !" he said, turning
away. " They are as ugliness to me ! I don't
feel a single touch of kin with or interest in
any one of them whatever."
330
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
" Jocelyn — this is sad."
" No — not at all." He went again towards
the door. " Now let me look round." He
looked back, Marcia remaining silent. M The
Aphrodites — how I insulted her fair form by
those failures ! — the Freyas, the Nymphs and
Fauns, Eves, Avices, and other innumerable
Well-Beloveds — I want to see them never any
more! . . . ' Instead of sweet smell there shall
be stink, and there shall be burning instead of
beauty,' said the prophet."
And they came away. On another after-
noon they went to the National Gallery, to
test his taste in paintings, which had formerly
been good. As she had expected, it was just
the same with him there. He saw no more
to move him, he declared, in the time-defying
presentations of Perugino, Titian, Sebastiano,
and other statuesque creators than in the
work of the pavement artist they had passed
on their way.
" It is strange !" said she.
" I don't regret it. I have lost a faculty
which has, after all, brought me my greatest
sorrows, if a few little pleasures. Let us be
gone."
He was now so well advanced in conv.ilcs-
331
THE WELL-BELOVED
cence that it was deemed a most desirable
thing to take him down into his native air.
Marcia agreed to accompany him. " I don't
see why I shouldn't," said she. " An old
friendless woman like me, and you an old
friendless man."
" Yes. Thank Heaven I am old at last ! The
curse is removed !"
It may be shortly stated here that after his
departure for the isle Pierston never again saw
his studio or its contents. He had been down
there but a brief while when, finding his sense
of beauty in art and nature absolutely extinct,
he directed his agent in town to disperse the
whole collection ; which was done. His lease
of the building was sold, and in the course of
time another sculptor won admiration there
from those who knew not Joseph. The next
year his name figured on the retired list of
Academicians.
As time went on he grew as well as one of
his age could expect to be after such a blast-
ing illness, but remained on the isle, in the
only house he now possessed, a comparatively
small one at the top of the Street of Wells.
A growing sense of friendship which it would
332
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
be foolish to interrupt led him to take a some-
what similar house for Marcia quite near, and
remove her furniture thither from Sand-
bourne. Whenever the afternoon was fine he
would call for her, and they would take a
stroll together towards the Beal, or the an-
cient castle, seldom going the whole way, his
sciatica and her rheumatism effectually pre-
venting them, except in the driest atmos-
pheres. He had now changed his style of
dress entirely, appearing always in a homely
suit of local make, and of the fashion of thirty
years before, the achievement of a tailoress
at East Quarriers. He also let his iron-gray
beard grow as it would, and what little hair
he had left from the baldness which had fol-
lowed the fever. And thus, numbering in
years but two-and-sixty, he might have passed
for seventy-five.
Though their early adventure as lovers had
happened so long ago, its history had be-
come known in the isle with mysterious ra-
pidity and fulness of detail. The gossip to
which its bearing on their present friendship
gave rise was the subject of their conversation
on one of these walks along the cliffs.
4< It is extraordinary what an interest our
333
THE WELL-BELOVED
neighbors take in our affairs," he observed.
" They say, ' those old folk ought to marry ;
better late than never.' That's how people
are — wanting to round off other people's his-
tories in the best machine-made conventional
manner."
" Yes. They keep on about it to me, too,
indirectly."
" Do they ! I believe a deputation will wait
upon us some morning, requesting, in the in-
terests of match-making, that we will please to
get married as soon as possible. . . . How near
we were to doing it forty years ago — only you
were so independent ! I thought you would
have come back, and was much surprised that
you didn't."
" My independent ideas were not blame-
worthy in me, as an islander, though as a
kimberlin young lady perhaps they would
have been. There was simply no reason, from
an islander's point of view, why I should come
back, and I didn't. My father kept that view
before me, and I bowed to his judgment."
" And so the island ruled our destinies
though we were not on it. Yes — we are in
hands not our own. . . . Did you ever tell your
husband?"
334
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
"No."
" Did he ever hear anything?"
" Not that I am aware."
Calling upon her one day, he found her in a
stat^ of great discomfort. In certain gusty
winds the chimneys of the little house she
had taken here smoked intolerably, and one
of these winds was blowing then. Her draw-
ing-room fire could not be kept burning, and,
rather than let a woman who suffered from
rheumatism shiver tireless, he asked her to
come round and lunch with him as she had
often done before. As they went he thought,
not for the first time, how needless it was that
she should be put to this inconvenience by
their occupying two houses when one would
better suit their now constant companionship,
and disembarrass her of the objectionable
chimneys. Moreover, by marrying Marcia,
and establishing a parental relation with the
young people, the rather delicate business of
his making them a regular allowance would
become a natural proceeding.
And so the zealous wishes of the neighbors
to give a geometrical shape to their story were
fulfilled almost in spite of the chief parties
themselves. When he put the question to her
335
THE WELL-BELOVED
distinctly, Marcia admitted that she had al-
ways regretted the imperious decision of her
youth; and she made no ado about accepting
him.
" I have no love to give, you know, Marcia, "
he said. " But such friendship as I am capa-
ble of is yours till the end."
" It is nearly the same with me — perhaps
not quite. But, like the other people, I have
somehow felt, and you will understand why,
that I ought to be your wife before I die."
It chanced that a day or two before the
ceremony, which was fixed to take place very
shortly after the foregoing conversation, Mar-
cia's rheumatism suddenly became acute. The
attack promised, however, to be only tempo-
rary, owing to some accidental exposure of
herself in making preparations for removal,
and as they thought it undesirable to postpone
their union for such a reason, Marcia, after
being well wrapped up, was wheeled into the
church in a chair.
A month thereafter, when they were sitting
at breakfast one morning, Marcia exclaimed,
" Well — good heavens !" while reading a letter
she had just received from Avice, who was
336
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
living with her husband in a house Pierston
had bought for them at Sandbourne.
Jocelyn looked up.
" Why, Avice says she wants to be sepa-
rated from Henri ! Did you ever hear of such
a thing? She's coming here about it to-day."
" Separated? What does the child mean?"
Pierston read the letter. " Ridiculous non-
sense !" he continued. " She doesn't know
what she wants. I say she sha'n't be sepa-
rated ! Tell her so, and there's an end of it.
Why, how long have they been married?
Not twelve months. What will she say when
they have been married twenty years !"
Marcia remained reflecting. " I think that
remorseful feeling she unluckily has at times,
of having disobeyed her mother and caused
her death, makes her irritable," she murmured.
" Poor child !"
Lunch-time had hardly come when Avice
arrived, looking very tearful and excited. Mar-
cia took her into an inner room, had a conver-
sation with her, and they came out together.
" Oh, it's nothing," said Marcia. " I tell her
she must go back directly she has had some
luncheon."
"Ah, that's all very well !" sobbed Avice.
Y 337
THE WELL-BELOVED
" B-b-but if you two had been m-married so
long as I have, y-you wouldn't say go back
like that!"
" What is it all about?" inquired Pierston.
" He said that if he were to die I — I — should
be looking out for somebody with fair hair and
gray eyes, just — just to spite him in his grave,
because he's dark, and he's quite sure I don't
like dark people ! And then he said — But I
won't be so treacherous as to tell any more
about him ! I wish — "
" Avice, your mother did this very thing.
And she went back. Now you are to do the
same. Let me see; there's a train — "
" She must have something to eat first. Sit
down, dear."
The question was settled by the arrival of
Henri himself at the end of luncheon, with a
very anxious and pale face. Pierston went
off to a business meeting, and left the young
couple to adjust their differences in their own
way.
His business was, among kindred under-
takings which followed the extinction of the
Well-Beloved and other ideals, to advance a
scheme for the closing of the old natural
fountains in the Street of Wells, because of
338
A YOUNG MAN TURNED SIXTY
their possible contamination, and supplying
the townlet with water from pipes — a scheme
that was carried out at his expense, as is well
known. He was also engaged in acquiring
some old moss-grown, mullioned Elizabethan
cottages, for the purpose of pulling them down
because they were damp ; which he afterwards
did, and built new ones, with hollow walls and
full of ventilators.
At present he is sometimes mentioned as
" the late Mr. Pierston " by gourd-like young
art critics; and his productions are alluded to
as those of a man not without genius, whose
powers were insufficiently recognized in his
lifetime.
THE END
80 22 90 220
PR
4 750 AVoo 1905
The well-beloved: sketch of a
temperament /
Hardv Thomas 1840-1928.
H404I
Live Music
Archive
Librivox
Free Audio
Metropolitan Museum
Cleveland
Museum of Art
Internet
Arcade
Console Living Room
Open Library
American
Libraries
TV News
Understanding
9/11